Blue Goose ~ Day 197

December 10, 2014 ~ Nogales, AZ to Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ

Nogales was bigger and busier than I expected, like El Paso was when I drove through there two years ago. I went to McDonalds just down the street, and by the time I left two hours later, it was full of Hispanic families, laughing, socializing, hanging out, their beautiful, dark-eyed, pre-school children solemnly looking at me.  

The ephemeral Santa Cruz River at Nogales - AZ

My destination for the day was Patagonia just 20 miles north. Five miles south of town, I turned into Patagonia Lake State Park and reserved a campsite for the night. There were only two no-hookup sites available, but they were on the lake, which is actually a reservoir of Sonoita Creek. The campground was four miles off the highway, the road passing through grasslands, winding around and down to the lake, past nice homes / casitas widely scattered on the hillsides. I know Jim Harrison once lived in Patagonia. I wondered if one of these places were his, or if he even continues to maintain a home here and if the locals know him. A lady running a gift shop wasn’t sure. The landscape is scenic with red canyons, tawny grasses, pine trees on the mountainsides, washes with sycamores and cottonwoods and willows…bosques and cienegas (woods and wet places), sunshine and blue, blue skies. 

Patagonia - AZ

One reason Patagonia attracts birders from all over the world is the Paton yard with its many feeders on the edge of town and contiguous with a Nature Conservancy property. Patagonia is small…a quintessential dry southwestern town with a small post office (where I picked up a monthly mail drop), a hotel, a few gift shop/galleries, a bird feed store, a couple of restaurants, a real estate office, a coffee shop, a church. A covered sidewalk fronts some of these buildings. A second main street runs parallel a block away with the PIGS (Politically Incorrect Gas Station), a grocery store, a saloon, etc. The town is not pretentious in any way. A nice surprise was the Gathering Grounds, a coffee shop / bakery, which also served breakfast and lunch. The food was extraordinarily tasty and fresh...quiches, savory pies, soups, salads for lunch and all the normal breakfast offerings. Surely it is filling a niche in Patagonia. The coffee was also as good as it gets. To me, the staff were what I think of as enlightened focused hippies...a bit aloof to strangers, tending to business, chatting with the regulars...

I followed easy directions, arrived at the Paton yard and immediately locked my keys in the car, but did it well in that they were visible on the passenger seat and I had cracked the windows a couple of inches. Still, I've been so mindful of this possibility, always mentally noting as I leave the car that the keys are in my hand but, as Dave VH says, “It’s not if; it’s when..” I was disgruntled because it could have been a huge expensive problem. I have a spare in my purse which was in the car. What I had in hand were binoculars and camera. But it was a lovely warm and sunny morning and not a crisis yet. I walked behind the house where a gentleman named Larry Morgan (who now lives in the Paton house and takes care of the property) was talking with two other birders, but he immediately got a coat hanger and easily retrieved my keys. I didn't have to break a window or wait hours for a key to get made somewhere, somehow. Everyone has locked-keys-in-the-car stories.

The deal with the famous Paton yard is this: Marion Paton fed the birds for years; however, she died in 2009. Her kids continued the tradition but didn't have the commitment and passion their mother had, or at least not all of them did. So Victor Emanuel Tours (a prestigious bird-guiding business) and the Tucson Audubon Society raised the money and bought this place. How cool is that??? It's an hour from Tucson. Larry, who moved from Mississippi a few years ago, is the man in that he is cordial, helpful, knows his birds and constantly spots them all over the yard: at the dripping water feature, in the brush piles, on the feeders, on the fences, in the trees. I went back two more times while in the area, and each time Larry was out meeting people, finding birds, talking birds…. He mows the lawns, fills the feeders and generally maintains the property. It’s the place for hummingbirds in the spring, so I hope DHC and I will see the some of the dozen species that pass through, like a Violet-crowned Hummingbird. In late fall and winter, Anna's are the most common. Dozens of other species also stop by, even during this relatively slow time of year. The “most colorful birds” lately were a pair of Lazuli Buntings, but there were also woodpeckers, wrens, sparrows, cardinals, Pyrrhuloxias, finches, doves, hawks, warblers (always the Yellow-rumps), juncos, towhees, thrashers, a Bullock's Oriole... Ravens flew overhead, Common and/or Chihuahuan, very similar and hard for me to ID without more exposure. 

There were benches and chairs in a central area, facing all directions, some under a shade screen. Birds flew in and out constantly except for a Sharp-shinned Hawk flyover when they all briefly headed for cover. 

I also drove through the famous Patagonia Rest Area, a pull-off along the main highway, with steep cliffs on one side and riparian brush and trees on the other. For some reason, it was a bit spooky to me, and there few birds this time of year, this time of day. Maybe next spring….It is always mentioned as a premier spot for migrating birds, and rarities often are seen here. 

Back at the campground I pulled out a chair, poured a glass of wine, got some cheese and crackers, put my feet up on the picnic bench and read in the sun. I had noticed a blue tent on the site next to me but didn’t make the connection to Connie and Joe until they pulled up in their rental car. Connie and Joe from Madera Canyon. For me, this was a pleasant surprise, totally unexpected. 

So, we caught up on the interval since I had seen them last. They are just so cool, doing what they do on Canoe Island and flying to places with all the camping gear they need; tent, cooking gear and bedding and then camp the old-fashioned way. I totally admired them for this and vow to do better at camping / cooking myself. They hike and bird and check out local history, return to camp, build a fire, have a G and T, cook a meal.... 

They had hiked up the Sonoita Creek trail earlier in the day into Elegant Trogon Possible Sighting Territory, as one of these birds winters here also, among the sycamores along the creek. They didn’t see it but other birders did, so just before dusk we all headed back down the trail hoping, hoping…. No luck, and the light faded quickly and early but a mile hike in the increasing gloom was fun with such accomplished partners. The trail is partly on ranch property and cows poop on the trails and quietly munch away under the trees. We heard a birds calling from the marsh, but it got too dark to see them. 

Notices in several places warned that a mountain lion (cougar) had recently been sighted in the campsite. Joe had a great story about seeing cougars: He actually said he has seen them four times, but one time was especially awesome. He was driving the bus back from some outing when they worked in central Oregon. It was dark and suddenly a HUGE cougar leaped across the road right in front of the windshield, like nearly touching the bus. He was utterly stunned by its size, and still has a vivid clear memory of that moment. He went back the next day to track it and found that the cougar had stopped up the hill from the road, sat and watched the bus. Joe regretted that he hadn’t had the presence of mind to use his spotlight and was sure he might have highlighted this magnificent creature for all the kids on the bus to see. And now, I too, will have this visual image of a golden lion leaping in the headlights on a dark night in the Oregon desert. 

Very near the campsite was a pedestrian bridge over a backwater of the lake. It rose and descended steeply  over the water. We climbed to the top and looked for roosting Black-crowned Night-Herons and could just see them silhouetted against the water. It was about 6 p.m. and felt like at least 10 p.m. 

Patagonia Lake State Park - AZ

I retired, got cozy and read for a long time, looking at the stars out the window.