Passionate birders (other than me 🙃), we were out again early on Friday morning before the shuttle to the airport arrived at 1:00 pm.

Today we went to Ramsay Canyon where 37 species, including 8 species of hummingbirds were noted. Of great excitement was the presence of not one, but TWO pygmy owls. In spite of the valiant efforts of my group leader, I could not see them. “See that branch that is forked off from the larger branch that is parallel to the ground? While go up six inches and they’re in behind the group of leaves that are bright green.” Right. Not a chance!

But what I was able to see and shoot, though it’s a very small part of the photo I took, was a hummingbird sitting on her/his nest! This was as exciting as the pygmy owls! Our specialists could not determine the species because not enough of his/her coloring was showing.

Here is a selection of the other birds I could both see and shoot.

This Road Scholar trip has made for a wonderful break from cold rainy Vancouver though I’ll never understand birders. I can relate to the challenge of adding birds sighted to an ever-expanding list. See a couple of pages of the booklet Road Scholar provided for this purpose. (My numbers refer to the page in my SE Arizona bird guide where I will find that bird.)

What I don’t understand is how birdwatchers can check off a bird when they only heard it’s song or call. Where’s the “watching” in that? If there are any twitchers reading this blog, please enlighten me!

Now I’m back in cold rainy Vancouver, delighting in the memory of sunny warm Arizona. I was surprised by the variety of landscape having – ignorantly – expected desert. Here is a selection of the beautiful places we stopped to watch birds.

I hope you’ve enjoyed birding with me. Next up (making up for two lost pandemic years) is Newfoundland and Labrador in June . I hope you’ll come with me. Bye for now. ❤️