Tubac Hawk Watch

Since we heard about the Tubac Hawk Watch last year we planned to take part in it and with the peak being mid March we booked an Airbnb for two nights this weekend. Besides the Hawk watch we also plan to visit Tubac and Tumacacori and also look around for any rare birds in this rare riparian area. We arrive late Friday at the Airbnb and after a dinner at the only restaurant in walking distance inside the Golf Resort we go to sleep to recuperate for the Hawk Watch next day.

While making breakfast we explore a bit the small garden on the back patio of our room, it is quite cute with an active hummingbird feeder.

One of the things that attracted us to the Airbnb was the fact that you can climb onto the roof and view the neighborhood. Before leaving for the day we do just that, the views are great and we even see a few distant birds.

First stop today is at the Tubac Hawk Watch in Ron Morriss County Park. It is the heyday of the Hawk Watch and there are a lot more people than we expected which is quite good when birding as there are many eyes looking for hawks.

We look at the count and there are quite a few hawks, eagles and vultures being seen in the last days and looking up it seems it is another good day with lots of turkey vultures and other raptors circling or passing by.

Some fly very close to the people watching them, the zone-tailed hawks specifically like to surveil the multitude of birders watching them.

After an hour of hawk watching it is time to move on but not too far, only a few hundred feet to the De Anza Trail trailhead. Here we are planning to search for becards as a female becard has been seen recently in the area.

Passing the bridge we have to stop a few times as something is working it’s way through the ground cover and we are curious regarding to what it might be. We finally notice the Abert’s Towhee that is burying itself beneath the leaves to search for something tasty making noise way disproportionate compared to its size.

We cross the bridge because the nests are on that side of the river and the trail was always missing the bridge over the river when we visited before. This time however the bridge is there, supposedly it is taken out only during monsoon season.

The trail we follow is not strictly the official De Anza Trail which is on the other side of the river but still it is a beautiful hike in the riparian area.

There are three becard nests that are marked on this side of the river and we find two of them with the third one possibly destroyed. Unfortunately the female becard is nowhere to be seen – this is the third time the becards have evaded us.

Last time we were here the river was raging, today we can barely recognize it as it is quite stagnant at least the side channel near the trail.

While we struck out with the becards we see quite a few other birds between them our first white winged dove of the year.

There are also lots of butterflies along the trail especially Texan Crescents, which are quite beautiful.

Next we drive to downtown Tubac as it is time for the art portion of our visit. Tubac has multiple galleries and we start with the Tubac Center of the Arts which is where we parked.

It has a small gift shop and a larger area dedicated to exhibits. The art is actually quite good and we enjoy it, it feels like we are in a museum that just happens to be free.

We visit a few more galleries and even decide on a few possible purchases but before that we have to eat something as we are famished.

There is one restaurant in the downtown area that has good reviews, Elvira’s restaurant, and we decide to eat there. We order mole and molcajetes and both are good even though we feel there should have been more mole in the mole dish.

After lunch we wander a bit more through Tubac admiring the metal art which is quite popular now but most stores begin to close so we return back to the buy the pieces we chose before our lunch.

Returning to the Airbnb we spend the rest of daylight on the roof enjoying the views and of course the birds.

There are quite a few birds in this area settling for the night. The one that didn’t get the memo was the cardinal who is singing its lungs out like it is sunrise not sunset.

Another fun sequence we observe is a raven annoyed with a branch that was messing its photos taking that branch and then intentionally putting its leg on it and then sitting all smug afterwards like saying – take a photo of me now! And then it gets dark so we go inside where we watch TV and decide what to do the next day before going to sleep.

Today it is time to check out but before we do that we take one more look from the roof. Quite nice to be able to climb and survey the surrounding area like in the old westerns were you climb on top of the pueblo to look for invaders.

Before leaving Tubac we take a short detour to the Hawk Watch, there are less hawks today so we continue to the nearby community center. Here there are quite a few birds. most of them common, but at least an ubiquitous vermillion flycatcher lets us take some nice close by photos.

The first major stop for today is at Guy Tobin Trailhead in Rio Rico, south of Tubac. It has a huge parking area but there is only one car besides us and soon we start exploring the river edge.

What we are searching here is a rare (for US) Green Kingfisher that has been recently. We have no luck on our own but then we meet the owner of the other car who makes it his mission to help us find it (thanks!). We follow him up and down the trail as he hears the bird calling and then….

…here it is! In fact we see two of them both the male (photo) and female. Really cool to be able to see something so rare and so easy, relatively.

Our impromtu guide is not done. “Do you want to see a Great-Horned Owl?” he asks and we say yes because who doesn’t? And he takes us to a nearby tree and there in full view of the highway is a Great Horned Owl nest, quite cool!

After thanking profusely to our local guide we decide to walk on our own on the trail to see what we can observe. Especially given that the guide gave us a description on where we might be able to see the kingfisher nest.

The trail follows the Santa Cruz River but at a distance so we cannot see the river even though it seems we are walking in the floodplain.

As we get closer to the supposed nest the trail reaches the river again and there are quite a few birds but no green kingfisher.

We find what we assume is the nest but it is empty now given that both kingfishers are upstream so we decide to return to the car as we are getting hungry and still have one more stop planned before lunch.

While returning we are hassled by another zone-tailed hawk flying quite low above us and doing circles, if there were a few more we would have been quite scared…

Our second major stop today is at Tumacacori National Historic Park. We decide to visit the park first versus having lunch because there is rain in the forecast and we really want to see the park prior to the rain. With the National Park pass entry is a breeze and soon we are inside the park.

The park protects the Tumacacori Mission Ruins, the mission being established in 1691 making it the oldest mission site in Arizona and abandoned in 1848. It is surprisingly well preserved and impressive from the outside especially if you know that it was never completely finished so the tower is not destroyed but looks closely to the condition it was when it was abandoned.

Inside it is quite interesting to see the original plaster, you can see how it was painted and where the statues were standing inside the church.

Looking up in the chapel it is great to see how well the ceiling is preserved, we wonder if there were more paintings or if that was the extent they were able to paint. Closer to the ground we find the usual historic graffiti from people that sheltered inside after the mission was abandoned.

After we exit we go to the back of the church were we see an unfinished mortuary chapel (we have to ask a ranger what it was as we cannot guess on our own) and the cemetery.

Continuing on our tour we pass the storeroom and the kiln as we try to find the best way to the De Anza Trail and Santa Cruz River.

We finally find the trail, it is quite scenic through the bosque and after about 0.2 miles we are at the river finding also two caches along the way.

Returning to the mission area we explore a few more close by buildings including a typical Native home during Spanish times.

The only other building in the area is part of the mission and the original floor has been found but in order to preserve it was covered with a modern floor that has the same pattern.

Before leaving Tumacacori we also visit the small museum, the biggest attraction being the statues that decorated the interior of the mission.

Now it is finally time for our really late lunch and we buy some food from a Tubac restaurant, the food is not as good as the previous day and also they tackle a credit card charge without giving us an option to pay cash, quite annoying.

We take another short tour through Tubac, this time we have a specific gallery in mind where we buy a couple paintings that really impressed us the previous day.

The last stop that we planned for the day is at Sweetwater Wetlands Park. We are hesitating if we should visit it as we get rained on the drive towards Tucson but as we arrive the clouds seem to be further away so in the end we stop and immediately see quails in the parking lot and a possible greater scaup from the first viewpoint.

As usual there are quite a few coots, most of them are running away but some are charging towards us, which looks scary when viewed through the camera.

Audubon’s warblers are everywhere and verdin are also quite common but difficult to see in most cases as they have a propensity to hide and move quickly from hiding place to hiding place.

The marsh looks as scenic as ever especially with the clouds on the horizon, we try to avoid going to far from the car just in case we need to run back to it.

As we continue on our loop we see quite a few of other waterbirds like shovelers and cinnamon teals, red winged blackbirds and a sad looking Great Blue Heron.

The weather seems to change for the worse so we hurry back to the car arriving there before sunset and then it is time to drive back to Phoenix after a nice long weekend with lots of nature and culture.