Greater Roadrunner, Always Bring Binoculars

A frantic flock of rosy-finches appears out of dense cloud cover

Rosy-finches and more in New Mexico

Travel in all its forms delights me. To my great fortune, I get to visit all sorts of wonderful places. At Christmas, while much of America was dealing with bomb cyclones and flight delays, we headed out for an end-of-year road trip. Our destination was Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’d never been. For the first time on an extended trip, we were bringing our pandemic puppy with us. I was especially excited about this trip because my parents were meeting us in Santa Fe. I don’t get to see them as much as I wish. The chance to explore a new place with my wife, my boys, and my parents around was invigorating.

On the way to Santa Fe, we stopped first at the Grand Canyon. Our boys had never been there. They were underwhelmed. Our youngest said “it’s just a canyon, but bigger.” Regular trips to southern Utah, spiced with adolescence, can diminish the grandeur of nature’s amazing wonders. I enjoyed the relatively uncrowded scene. We stayed right at the southern rim in the Yavapai Lodge. We arrived at night. Noticing a clear sky, I headed out into the darkness to see the Milky Way. As usual, it was humbling. It was a new moon, so I couldn’t see anything else – just a black void over the rim. We all arose early the next morning to catch sunrise at snow-sprinkled Mather Point. After breakfast, we walked out to the Yavapai Geology Museum, which is super cool. As a bonus, a Juniper Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, and Hairy Woodpecker all made an appearance while I tended the dog. I think she appreciated the view as much as anyone else.

Grand Canyon

Painted Desert

Sandia Crest

Having pondered the impossibility of that colossal canyon, we loaded up for the ride to Santa Fe. Along the way, we stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona (get a delicious hot dog and crepe at Sipp Shoppe if you stop). We stretched our legs at the Painted Desert rim of Petrified Forest National Park. And we debated provenance and counted the fingers at Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque.

Our home base in Santa Fe was a 2-bedroom casita at the Pecos Trail Inn. Not fancy, but just what we needed. This wasn’t a birding-focused trip. Rather, we were checking out the sights in and around Santa Fe. We took a historical architectural walking tour of downtown, we drove up to Los Alamos for nuclear bomb history and a science museum, spent an afternoon amongst the cliff dwelling ruins of Bandelier National Monument, had our minds blown at an art installation called Meow Wolf, ate some enchiladas, and enjoyed a good snowfall.

Of course, there was birding. While there wasn’t a ton of bird diversity in Santa Fe, my Dad and I managed some nice sightings as we wandered the neighborhood around the Pecos Trail Inn. We also visited the Randall Davey Audubon Center just outside town, which (if it weren’t for the falling snow and wind) seems like a great place to see birds.

Pine Siskin

Canyon Towhee

Roadrunner

Evening Grosbeak

While birding wasn’t the focus of this trip, I wasn’t going to visit northern New Mexico without making the pilgrimage to Sandia Crest. It’s a stunning mountain ridge a mile above above the already mile-high city of Albuquerque. The reason to go is the Rosy-finches. These are high elevation birds – they breed above the treeline in the mountains of the American West and Canada and Alaska. In the winter, they descend to lower elevations, giving us a chance to see them. Sandia Crest is (I believe) the single best spot in the world to see all three species of rosy-finches in one visit. That it’s easy to access via a paved road makes it all the better. Good thing on the maintenance, because a snow storm a couple days before we arrived and dense cloud cover which reduced visibility at times to 20-30 feet on the drive up made the drive up a little more adventurous. As we neared the top, every branch of every tree and bush was covered in snow and ice. When we finally made it to the top, there were high winds and snow, and not much else going on. It took my son and I a few minutes of wandering before we found the all-important feeder that brought in the rosy-finches.

The Rosy-finch feeder at Sandia Crest

While the others wandered the crest, I stood and watched. An Abert’s Squirrel with its tufted ears was sitting on the feeder when I found it, which didn’t bode well for the rosy-finches to come visit. A few ladies with binoculars got excited about some birds perched near the feeder, but they turned out to be Cassin’s Finches. After about 30 minutes of waiting, a flock of birds appeared out of the mist. One second the feeder was empty, the next there were 30 rosy-finches taking their turns at the feeder or working the ground for seed. I spent a minute or two scanning through my binoculars. Most were Black Rosy-finches, but at least two birds were something else. They weren’t chestnut brown, but they were a faded shade of brown. While there was a hint of gray at the back of their head, they lacked a clear gray-crown.

The dense clouds softened my views, and I decided I wasn’t going to be able to confidently separate Brown-capped from Gray-crowned Rosy-finch with these views. Worried the flock would flush at any moment, I decided it was best to just snap a bunch of photos and see what I could pick out later (triggering the Manx Shearwater Conundrum). A report the day before of an American Three-toed Woodpecker in the trees along the nearby trail had me thinking about walking around to see if I could stumble into it. But I stayed near the feeder, hoping for a return of the Rosy-finches. A group of 5 Black Rosy-finches flew in 15 minutes later, and left just as quickly. Better weather would have allowed us to stay longer. All were cold, though, so we packed it in and headed back down the mountain.

The most range-limited Rosy-finch, the Brown-capped (banded)

I wasn’t able to pick out a Gray-crowned (the most widespread of the rosy-finches) in any of my pictures, which meant I only added 2 lifers to my list instead of getting the trifecta. But that’s no lament. The whole thing was a great, memorable experience. I’d go back to New Mexico in a hot minute, especially for some spring or fall adventures. There looked to be a ton of good hiking around, and much more to explore.

Along the road to Sandia Crest

Greater Roadrunner Joshua Tree National Park

This desert icon at the Joshua Tree visitor’s center delighted the family

Beauty, peacefulness, and a few birds

Over the Thanksgiving break, we took a weekend trip to Yucca Valley, near Joshua Tree National Park. My parents were in town, and they hadn’t been to Joshua Tree in 50 years. November is a great time to enjoy the desert, and the boys love to scramble on the granite rock formations, so we snagged an airbnb and took the drive. We stopped at the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, which was shockingly disappointing on the birding front. With all its trees and bushes, it’s usually a pretty productive place. But we struggled to stir up much of anything. Dad got an Oak Titmouse lifer, but there was little else moving around. Maybe the recently spotted bear in the area had the birds in hiding (no kidding).

Campground Cactus Wrens are not shy

Joshua Tree National Park proved better, bird-wise, which is an unusual thing to say. The desert is beautiful and peaceful and wonderful in 70 degree weather, but it’s never hopping with bird activity. A visit to Black Rock campground produced a couple dozen scrub jays, some Black-throated Sparrow, a couple Bell’s Sparrows, and some sharp Cactus Wrens around a water-drip. Inside the park proper, we had a nice encounter with a male Phainopepla (another lifer for Dad). It was calling, and moving about, while we sat on the rocks and ate snacks. The visitor center provided a close-up view of a female Costa’s Hummingbird, and a fun encounter with a Greater Roadrunner in the parking lot. My mom, my wife, and my sons had never seen one before, and it posed for a minute or so, slowly bobbing its tail and occasionally raising its crest. Such cool birds.

Our airbnb was just outside the park in Yucca Valley, a couple of miles from the highway. Cool, quiet evenings provided stunning sunsets and a star-filled sky. During a couple strolls around the neighborhood, I saw Gambel’s Quail, a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, and the best bird of the trip: an out-of-season Scott’s Oriole.

Scott’s Oriole

Rare in winter

Enjoying My Dad’s Enthusiasm

Of the many reasons I enjoy birding with my Dad, seeing his enthusiasm and optimism is near the top. He wants to see all the birds, and take photos of all the birds, and learn their names and something about their behaviors, and figure out how to identify them. Whereas I’ll stand in a spot and quickly get the sense that there’s nothing but White-crowned Sparrows and Scrub Jays around (and the odds say I’m right), he’ll eagerly pursue every flash of movement he sees, wondering what possible lifer just flashed into a bush in his peripheral vision. In the end, maybe he just finds another White-crowned Sparrow or Scrub Jay. But that approach–to bird every bird–is one that can be easy to leave behind the more time you get in the field. And that’s a shame when it happens. The wonder of birding we all felt early on, when every possible movement and sound was some field guide drawing come to life, is something we shouldn’t put behind us.

I reminded myself of the point of it all the other day, when my Dad and I were standing at the Ballona Freshwater Marsh at dusk crossing our fingers that a Short-eared Owl that had been spotted the day before was still around. Another birder joined us, and lamented that his camera wasn’t good at low light pictures. “It’s not about the photo,” I said. “We’re here because we want to see an owl. ” As human nature and obsessive compulsiveness and eBird lure us into counting everything, documenting it with tack-sharp close-up photographs, and valuing a sighting most of all because it is a new one for our (fill-in-the-blank) list, it’s important to remember that we’re out in the field with our binoculars because, more than anything, we want to get eyes on that bird that just flew into the bush, and if we’re lucky, see an owl fly around.

Tag: Greater Roadrunner

Road trip rosy-finches in New Mexico