Arizona, Part 4: Sedona

After visiting the Grand Canyon we spent the remainder of our trip in and around Sedona. The rest of our itinerary consisted of daily hikes and a jeep tour. The scenery around Sedona is absolutely stunning. Red rock formations abound and beg you to climb them. The younger members of our group hiked everyday and some of those hikes were quite challenging, like the Devil’s Bridge trail and Cathedral Rock trail. I commend them for their stamina and youthful enthusiasm. I joined them on the Devil’s Bridge climb, but after that I chose the more moderate or easier trails with the elder members of the group.

Some of the picturesque scenery of Sedona, Arizona. © S. Weiss

It was at the Devil’s Bridge hike that I picked up my second life bird, a Crissal thrasher. I heard the bird calling/singing along the trail, but could not get eyes on it. I hesitated to list it since I wasn’t 100% sure it was that such thrasher. But the next day, while walking the less vigorous Soldiers Pass trail, I heard the same vocalization. This time though I got eyes on the bird perched up on a tree snag. I photographed it and confidently added it to both lists. The hiking trails all looked great habitat-wise for birds and other western creatures, but it was a chore to find many different birds. My quasi brother-in-law (my sister’s boyfriend), a practicing herper, was sadly skunked on adding any new snakes to his life list.

Devil’s Bridge. © S. Weiss

Crissal thrasher. © S. Weiss

The bird is name for its bright rufous crissum feathers, between its vent and tail.

At the end of the Soldiers Pass walk/hike I picked up my last life bird while walking back to our car. A canyon towhee was foraging on the ground with several Woodhouse’s scrub-jays. It is rather a plain looking bird compared to spotted and Eastern towhees, but it was on my wish list.

Canyon towhee. © S. Weiss

Woodhouse’s scrub-jay. © S. Weiss

Eight of us took a two-hour guided Pink Jeep ride on the rugged Broken Arrow trail. I did not take my binoculars or camera on this adventure for fear of them getting damaged. There were no regrets for leaving them behind since there was no wildlife to be seen. I was a little apprehensive of taking the tour at first, but our guide/driver was great and the experience was so much better than I expected. Before heading out on the tour I asked our guide if we would be going off road since I could just drive through town in our rental car. She said no, that going off-road in is not allowed. It would destroy the sensitive top layer of soil in the area. However, we did go “off-road.” Apparently it’s a regional semantic thing. Off-road out there means driving off the road onto undesignated areas. We were on trails designated for off-highway vehicles, or OHV. Back in New Jersey it’s all simply, off-roading.

Part of the Broken Arrow trail and one of the Pink Jeep Tour drivers/guides showing the ruggedness of their Jeeps. © S. Weiss

My last new bird of the trip was another dark-eyed junco subspecies. At Slide Rock State Park, I spotted a red-backed dark-eyed junco. I had to review my photos of the bird to come to that identification as it was very similar to the gray-headed one I saw days earlier. This one was darker overall, but this one had a distinct bicolored bill that made the difference. Another year bird at this park were Stellar’s jays. I had seen a few earlier on the trip, but these gave me better photo opportunities. Our blue jays back east are very handsome themselves, but these eye-catching.

Left, red-backed dark-eyed junco. Right, gray-headed dark-eyed junco. © S. Weiss

The main field mark separating the two are the bills. The red-backed has a bicolored bill; the gray-headed has an all- pale bill.

Left, slate-colored dark-eyed junco, the default junco in New Jersey. Right, Oregon dark-eyed junco; the only other type of dark-eyed junco recorded in New Jersey. © S. Weiss

Like some of the birds that I expected to see but didn’t, the same applied to other wildlife. Javelina’s, wild pigs, are supposedly very common out there and yet we saw none. No snakes or tarantulas, but we did find a few lizards and quite a few scorpions. The highlight lizards were a spiny lizard, most likely a Clark’s spiny lizard, and a Western banded gecko. Some of us saw a pack of coyotes crossing the main road in Sedona on our way to dinner. Over the course of two mornings, we all heard other coyotes howling or crying in the distance.

Left, scorpion at night illuminated by a black light. Right, scorpion during day in normal viewing conditions.

Some of the other year birds from the trip not mentioned previously were: mountain chickadees and white-throated swifts. Other western species seen on the trip, not mentioned previously were: lesser goldfinches, bushtits, black-necked stilts, Western wood-pewee, Anna’s hummingbirds, and Eurasian-collated doves. Birds that eluded me yet again, not mentioned previously, were: American dipper, black-tailed gnatcatcher, Brewer’s sparrow, bridled titmouse, red-naped and Williamson’s sapsuckers, pygmy nuthatch, rosy-faced lovebird and pyrrhuloxia.