Daily Archives: Saturday May 18th, 2013

The town of Patagonia is an interesting little town. It is a “blue” town surrounded by a lot of “red”. It is very artistry and shows it off with colorful buildings. Even the one gas station is a political statement against a past corrupt police force (they are called marshals down here)

May 4, 2013 – Patagonia, AZ – The local gas station. Where a group of old men hang around watching traffic go by.

But BIG warning….if you come to Patagonia, do NOT speed!! They will get you, big on speed traps because that is how they fund the police. I’ve seen big rigs hit the brakes hard once they hit Patagonia. So if you are on 82 coming on through this little town, do NOT speed.

There are a few places to eat here in Patagonia. It is a very small town. =)

We ate a pizza place called the Velvet Elvis the first night here. The sauce was amazing on it. We had “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” and I’m not a fan of black olives or mushrooms, but it was good. We had an excellent bottle of root beer. We had to force ourselves not to drink it all before we got our pizza.

We had lunch one day at the Gathering Grounds. The lemonade….wow…it was addicting. The sandwiches were good. ToRn likes their fraps….they make them fresh, no pre made frap mix.

We’ve joined the little cozy library here so we can get movies and we go there and our PO Box about daily.

On one of my runs into town, I saw a dog that looked like rottweiler, but I wasn’t quite sure, I’ve never seen a rottweiler that big before….he was HUGE. He was being walked by an elderly gentleman, I just had to stop and ask. It was a rottweiler alright, with the softest puppy dog eyes. His owner told me that they’ve had a total of four rottweilers over the years and he was the largest they ever had and the most laid back one. It is the first time that I’ve meet a dog named “Bear” that it fit so perfectly. When ToRn finally saw him a week later, he agreed with me on that….grin I’m going to have to get a picture of him next time I see him.

Drew and Sakura are much happier that we aren’t going anywhere. They go into auto hiding when they hear the engine start and slide outs come in. But they have gotten much better at coming out once we stop. They will actually come when we call them, so that is good progress.

Well maybe not that big. But if it is what we think it was, it is for sure a “Lifer” bird.

Meaning once in a lifetime siting for a birder.

The Facts:

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

While hiking the Geoffrey Platts Trail in the TNC Patagonia – Sonoita Creek preserve, we saw this bird from about 75 yards away, he was on another peak and we had a valley between us, he was about 40′ higher in elevation.

It was 9:20am. I used a Pentax Optio W90 camera zoomed to the max.

I took only 1 picture.

We used Pentax 9×20 6.7 binoculars and watched him for about 10 mins. The sun got too hot so we continued our hike. We was able to see the sun off his breast from about 1/4 mile away.

We both saw red around the neck area. a very square tail, we believe light in color but with no red on the tail. We joked “it looked like a Penguin in a tree”.

May 14, 2013 – TNC – Patagonia – Sonoita Creek Preserve – Geoffrey Platts Trail – Possible the most “controversial” picture I have ever taken. This could be a “bigfoot” moment.

Using Photoshop we was able to zoom in and see what appears to be the red we both saw around the neck.

May 14, 2013 – TNC – Patagonia – Sonoita Creek Preserve – Geoffrey Platts Trail – Possible the most “controversial” picture I have ever taken. This could be a “bigfoot” moment. Zoomed in with help from Photoshop.

The question is, what is it?

We didn’t know at the time, “assumed” it was a “Black Hawk” (A dumb ass guess if you ever seen a Black Hawk) I start looking in “The Sibley Guid to Birds” which is pretty much considered the “bird bible”.

The only bird that comes close to what we saw, is the Short-tailed Hawk.

Seeing a Short-tailed Hawk in this area is almost as rare as seeing a Bigfoot.

So I went to talk to a Larry Morgan, the caretaker of “Patons” and a bird expert. I showed him the one picture I had. I also showed him the zoomed Photoshop pic and he is like me, unsure. He suggested I contact the local bird expert Matt Brown.

I talked to Matt Brown and he is also unsure. He said if we was at the 8,000′ elevation he was say yes, but we was only at 4,300′. He said he would go look for it himself the next day and let me know.

Wednesday May 15, 2013

We have the Portland, OR Audubon Society visited and the group leader who I had met a few days prior, I believe he introduced himself as the President of the Portland Audubon but sadly, I forgot his name. When I showed him the picture of the wide shot, before I could even say anything else, he said “Short-Tailed Hawk”.

I asked him if he was sure, and why so sure, he told me he has been to Costa Rica many times and they are all over there. I started to describe what we saw, that the wide shot didn’t show, such as the red on the neck, he smiled and said “yep”.

I call Matt Brown. Matt went over and took a few pictures of what he thinks is a Red-tailed Hawk which is very common here. However, he didn’t have a good picture of it either. But he said it looked different then most Red-tailed Hawks, but he believes what he saw and what I saw, was a Red-tailed Hawk.

Matt Brown said he would submit the pictures to other birders and see what happens.

Saturday May 18, 2013

Matt Brown emails me, telling me he has had over 500 views, but only 3 replies.

2 of the 3 “think it is a Red-Tail” the other one is “unsure, but doesn’t think it sit’s like a Red-tail”.

So there you go. I’ve no idea what this bird is.

I didn’t want the extra weight of the video camera which has a 40x zoom vs a 5x. I normally take multiple pictures of what I see, but since it was so far, I didn’t think it would even be this good and I didn’t want to waste the pixels.

We got our new Canon Rebel T3 with 75mm x 300mm in the mail the next day.

Never fails.

Just a few pictures today.