to return click www.ComingsBirds.com
Arizona is one of my favorite states for bird watching and photography. Because of the new tax laws my daughter was advised to move her business out of California and she chose Tubac, Arizona, a charming small town with a 27 hole golf resort. In April, 2018, we drove to Tubac to see her new home. Naturally, I brought my birding camera, a Sony alpha 99 full frame with a 70 to 400 mm lens and a digital 1.4x and 2.0x, giving 800 mm for the weight of a 400 mm lens.
We visited three birding sites.
1. The the famous Paton Center for Hummingbirds in Pantagonia. Wally and Marion stocked and maintained bird feeders in their backyard beginning in the 1990’s and welcomed birders to visit. Thousands did. After their death, to continue the tradition, the American Bird Conservancy and Victor Emanuel Nature Tours launched a fundraising campaign to purchase the house. They then donated it to the Tucson Audubon Society in 2014.
2. The Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon near Green Valley, AZ. There is a wonderful setup there with many hummingbird, seed and suet feeders. There were dozens of Mexican Jays, Acorn Woodpeckers and many other birds. We revisited this wonderful site in November adding such birds as the Arizona Woodpecker, Dark-eyed Junco, White-eared Hummingbird, Northern Shrike, Painted Redstart and others.
3. The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum west of Tuscon. Founded in 1952, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is widely recognized throughout the world as a model institution for innovative presentation and interpretation of native plants and animals featured together in ecological exhibits. The Museum is regularly listed as one of the top ten zoological parks in the world. It has two walk-in aviaries, one for hummingbirds and one for other local birds. I visited this museum on my first trip to Arizona (see ComingsBirds.com/Arizona) and was very impressed. The birds in the aviaries change over time and they were completely different from the first time we visited.
As usual I thank Wikipedia for help with the bird descriptions.