Anniversary 2016 – Southern Arizona and Elegant Trogon

This year we took our wedding anniversary trip to southern Arizona. We had fun in Bisbee and seeing sites, but for birding the highlight was getting a good photo of the Elegant Trogon. More on that later.

If you read last year’s anniversary trip post you know that Mary Ann was recovering from a broken ankle, which limited our hiking. This year she was recovering from a broken toe! However, she did well and it didn’t slow her up too much. I told her if she doesn’t want to go on anniversary trips she can just say so, instead of breaking bones 🙂 .

The first leg of our trip was from home to the San Pedro River. It’s about a 2.5 hour drive, and we got there at about 10 am. The San Pedro River is a riparian area in the Sonoran Desert. We stopped at San Pedro House, which is a Riparian National Conservation Area (RNCA). It’s a great spot. We’ve been there before and saw a lot of birds. This trip we didn’t see a lot, and I wasn’t able to get many pictures of what we did see, but it’s always a worthwhile stop.

In the afternoon we headed to the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee Arizona, which was about a 20 minute drive. Bisbee is a former mining boom town that is now home to artists and tourist attractions. The Copper Queen Hotel was built in 1902 at the peak of the boom times. We wanted to be able to say we stayed there at least once. They have preserved a lot of the old stuff and mining memorabilia, which was pretty cool. On the other hand ‘historical’ doesn’t have to mean ‘run down’, and the Copper Queen hasn’t been maintained well. We can say we stayed there, but I doubt we would again.

Bisbee is a pretty cool town. The houses are perched on the hills, and there are many staircases all over the town to traverse the hills. It is home to artists and ‘characters’. I think that to live there you have to prove you are certifiably loony 🙂 . Just kidding – the people were nice if eccentric. We had dinner at a restaurant called ‘Thuy’s’, which serves Vietnamese cuisine. It was small and not fancy, but the food was excellent. We hiked around Bisbee, including some staircases, and wound up at ‘Old Bisbee Brewing Company’ for a beer.

Our plan was to go early the next morning to Ramsey Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains, and stay that night in Sierra Vista. We changed that plan when a birder at San Pedro House told us about Huachuca Canyon. It is on the Fort Huachuca army base, but he said we were guaranteed to see the Elegant Trogon. To get to the canyon you have to first stop at the fort’s visitor area and get a pass. We got a little later start than we planned, and didn’t see the Trogon.

We stayed Thursday night at the Sierra Suites in Sierra Vista. It was a nice place: big room, decent breakfast, good price, etc. We had planned the next day to go to Patagonia Lake State Park, but since Huachuca Canyon was so nice, and we had the passes, we decided to go again, but get there earlier, hoping to see the Trogon. It paid off, because I got a bunch of pictures of the Trogon from close up (I published two below).

In addition to the Elegant Trogon, we saw some other birds that can only be found in the U.S. in SE Arizona. The range for these birds is mostly in Mexico, but overlaps the U.S. in this small region in SE Arizona. Examples that I photographed on this trip are: Elegant Trogon, Gray Hawk, Magnificent Hummingbird, Sulfur-bellied Flycatcher, Painted Redstart, Arizona Woodpecker, Brown-crested Flycatcher.