Hanging out at the house we heard there was an elegant trogan within 20 miles of us. Elegant Trogon; that would be a life-bird. We’ve looked for them in Southeastern Arizona, where they’re supposed to be, and have always missed. It’s been on our radar for years.
So about noon, off we go to Estero Llano Grande State Park.
Estero Llano Grande State Park map
For a rare bird like this, you don’t need to go looking for the bird, you go looking for the pack of birders looking for the bird where it was last seen. We found them up a trail; there were about eight people all looking the same direction where the bird had just been. Within 20 minutes, the bird appeared again. We didn’t get extended looks at it, but we got several good glimpses. Here are the best (and worst) shots I got of it.
Life Bird!
This is a female bird. I went online and copied a photo of what it looks like when you can see the whole thing.
Here is what the male looks like.
By then it was only about 2 o’clock, so we decided to go a little farther east and see if there were any wintering geese at Tiocano Lake.
Tiocano Lake map
You’ll remember Tiocano Lake. That’s the place where I sent out the pictures of the flooded road where all you could see was the fence line above water.
No wintering geese at Tiocano. We wandered up and down the road. Roseate Spoonbills. It was still daylight when we were going to leave; too early to hear rails calling, but I played a clip of a King Rail anyway, just for the heck of it. A Sora went off with its distinctive call, which then set off a pair of King Rails calling to us from the reeds. We stood five feet from two rails, that we never saw, listening to them chuckle and chortle. Year Bird.
It was a good day birding.
