Mother Nature has decided I need a break from birding and has turned off the heater down here in south Texas. It has been 20 days of intense birding since the calendar turned and now officially at 179+2 provisionals. That puts me on par with our best Average Year back in 2023 (link here) and significantly ahead of our 2024 productivity (link here) – swapping the Texas and Arizona trips really hurt our numbers last year. Needless to say, plenty of new blog fodder this young year to take us well into 2027. In the midst of all the tin filling I completely forgot to announce the official start of our 18th year here at Intrigued. For all the staff, we’ll officially celebrate once everyone gets back from the field. Note, Brad and Jan are due back to the mainland soon, so get the place tidied up and stoke up the furnace.
Speaking of Brad and Jan, they actually beat me to today’s featured feathered friend.
Hit the jump if you are “Wren” for it! (the puns will continue until you beg for mercy ha)
If you recall, Brad previously brought us a post on their adventures at the Grand Canyon. While at Eagle Rock they came upon a Cactus Wren (link here). Brad is still working on getting his backlog up to Intrigued standards – read larger than mine so he doesn’t make me look so bad by putting out shots in the SAME year they were taken – the horror, the horror hehehehe. Wrenyhow, I finally finished processing all the shots from the January ’24 trip to Arizona right before we migrated south.
Sure enough, those tins were full of Cactus Wrens – which was a lifer for me. Last time I was in Arizona I was too young to bird and was spending my days chasing down Snakes and putting them back in the pit (link here). (note, it may have been frogs..my memory isn’t what it used to be). This particular Wren was spotted at Kartchner Caverns State Park outside Benson, AZ.
We were in the area to visit some dog agility friends that had moved out there to live full time in their RV. I had an incredible time birding the wash and scrub around the RV resort and hope to get back there on our spring trip. While there, our hosts recommended heading over to Kartchner Caverns State Park (link here) – they were members and could get us in for free. Did a quick check on eBird to have an idea what to look for and jumped in the car.
Unfortunately, our time was limited as we were heading to Apache Junction the following day. Opted to pass on the tour through the caverns as they also required reservations and didn’t want to deal with the hassle at the time. Our friends said it is a nice tour, so we’ll hopefully check that off next time. Instead, we opted to bird their hiking loop closest to the visitor center. Aaahhh, fond memories of being able to bird without dragging this stupid boot around going shuffle, KLUNK, shuffle KLUNK, shuffle KLUNK- imagine what my count would be today if I didn’t scare half the birds away just getting into picture range.
It was unseasonably cold that day and from that following day on the snow chased us all the way to Vegas – hmmm, beginning to think we are just cursed with the bad weather here in the southwest! Opted to take the short foothills loop just off from the visitor center, a ~3 mile moderately difficult loop that takes you past their campgrounds and then out to the wash following the Whetstone Block and the San Pedro Block faultline (link here). I will say ALL their trails seem to have a moderate to hard difficulty level to them, so be prepared to work for it if you plan on doing any hiking there. We made it about a mile out before turning back to warm the hands and ears up. Next time I’ll take the full loop with the Mountain View extension assuming the ankle is done with its petulant whining.
Birding was a bit weak that day, likely due to the weather, but we did manage to find this Cactus Wren specimen hanging out in the trees near the campground. Absolutely ecstatic that I could finally get a clear shot at this bird. In all my other encounters I was bouncing around like a spastic Warbler just trying to get a clean shot through the cacti and dessert scrub they prefer to hang out in. I also got really good looks at their red eyes – a sinister touch to the largest Wren in the US. For reference, the southwestern faring Cactus Wren dimensions in at 7-8.7″ where the more ubiquitous House Wren is only 4-5″ long.
Although larger and more full throated than the House, the Cactus still has that classic Wren “grinding teeth” call. Cornell refers to as 4 second attempts at a car that won’t start. Their calls can get downright buzzy whenever competition comes into the area. This particular one was content to balance across two twigs and watch the unprepared hikers navigate the limestone pathways. Clearly in the nonbreeding seasons or this extremely hostile desert dweller would have been attacking the crap out of us. Not exactly the cordial behavior you would expect from the Arizona state bird
Better leave it there to go make sure the waterlines are not freezing (yet). Hope you enjoyed another look at this feathered “Wriend” (trust me, there were plenty of puns I didn’t use ha)
Life Intrigued 