arizona_adrienne's Identifications

Hallelujah! This species has been my nemesis bird, now finally seen well. We got to watch the pair here forage around for ten minutes! Just below the dam at Florida canyon, mainly in the willow branches.

Why was this my nemesis bird? Well, I think this is the 11th time I’ve tried getting this species over the last 8 months! (and my infatuation with birding only really started 1 year ago…) There’s been about a dozen of these seen at different sites around SE Arizona over the year, with lots of good info shared, but I kept striking out. My effort includes 6x at the Patagonia lake trail where I often heard it calling within meters but couldn’t ever get eyes on (I think I saw one for 1 sec once). 2x at the Patagonia rest stop. 1x at Ramanote canyon. And now 2x at Florida canyon, now that they’ve suddenly re-established here after a few years’ absence.

Thankfully I was able to glean some pretty precise intel to help us finally get lucky today. Over the last week the warblers usually only appeared around 10:45, so we didn’t need to freeze our kiesters and only waltzed up 10 min before showtime (today it was 10:51-11:01).

Anyway, long story short, such a beautiful bird. And since this species usually stays low, nice to get to watch them pretty up-close! And we were grateful that the small group of birders staking out today (6 plus us) were a good crew as we all basked in the birds’ presence.