After drooling over the posts about the Crescent-chested Warbler, Aztec Thrush, and Northern Jacana, Babe Webster and I finally decided to go and see if we could get a look at them. In addition, Babe was closely approaching '700' on her A.B.A. List and still needed Black-capped Gnatcatcher and Ruddy Ground-Dove, which were also very possible there. For those of you who don't know it, Babe taught me most of the things I know about raptor identification when I started going up to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in the mid-70's and has been a long-time friend that I call my "birding mom" ever since. She kiddingly tells others that I'm her "adopted son". She is now in her mid-70's and still very agile for someone her age.
In my case, it makes it a little tougher for me to get away in the winter since it's during ice hockey season and I'm the goalie for my team. Not just anyone wants to play that position; I can't understand why. Our games are usually on Sunday nights, but because the Super Bowl was that week, we played our game on Saturday night instead. This left me the chance to get away from Sunday to Saturday. As most of you know, getting a flight within two weeks of when you want to go somewhere is usually pretty pricey, but I'm guessing since the Super Bowl was that Sunday (there are advantages to missing the game) I was able to find an American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Tuscon with only one stop in Dallas for $220.00 round-trip! You can't even drive there for that these days. Although we did miss a few of our 'targets', we had a pretty gratifying trip. Added to that was the bonus of getting to see something that doesn't happen very often, Madera Canyon draped in snow!
Sunday, February 3rd
Babe and I took off from Philadelphia Airport at around 6:30 PM, changed planes in Dallas, and got into Tucson near midnight Arizona time. There were a few happy New York Giants fans returning their rental cars and heading home by that time. We got our Alamo rental car (a Chevy Malibu) and drove to the nearby Motel 6 for a short night's stay.
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