Cousin David recalled a place to eat in Patagonia, Arizona that he thought was good. He had been there one time, a year earlier. We stepped inside the Wagon Wheel Saloon and he lit up when he saw the bartender. He remembered her name and said he was there when something or other happened. “Oh yes, I was working that day,” she exclaimed, delighted that he remembered her after all that time. It demonstrates what kind of guy David is. David Vincent founded the World Players of Handball in the U.S., and remains active in recruiting youth, announcing, and finding financial backing for the sport. He’s used his amazingly friendly and engaging personality his entire career. For me, it was fun to just hang out with him and watch how he got into genuine, enthusiastic conversations at nearly every stop we made.
The food and the company were outstanding. We shared the bar and conversation with a couple visiting from out of town who had come for their 20th wedding anniversary. Our meal ended before theirs, and while he was paying, Dave quietly asked the bartender to pay for their tab too, as an anniversary gift, and not to tell them who had paid it.
Next we went to the Paton Center for Hummingbirds, just a few blocks away. He explained that he really wanted me to see the Violet-crowned Hummingbird which can be spotted there. It’s purely a Mexican hummingbird, but during mating season will sometimes come as far north as the U.S. border. We were 20 miles (32 km) from that border.
We spent at least an hour there, and saw many birds. Like the bird watching station in Madera Canyon, the birds here are all wild, but with feeders constantly attended, it increases the opportunities to spot them. The one surprising thing was that, for a hummingbird place, there were very few hummingbirds, and not the superstar one we were looking for.
I enjoyed a female Arizona Woodpecker so much that I took a couple dozen photos of her. She was hopping around a little fountain and drinking and bathing. Such a beautiful bird. You can click through the slideshow below to see all my favourite shots of her.
David had wandered off while talking with a particularly bird-enthusiastic teenage boy. I was getting shots of the Chipping Sparrow when a small shadow zoomed past my head over to a nearby feeder. I trained my camera on it and OH! This is the one! I’m an amateur, and I tried both manual and auto focus, but the stupid camera just refused to focus on the teeny little hummingbird flashing a lavish purple at me. I clicked like a spastic maniac and got a dozen like this:
FINALLY, I got one in focus, and he zoomed away again.
David came back soon after that, and apologized for not having found the fancy hummingbird for me. I showed him the digital screen on my camera. “Check this out,” I said. “You got it!” he exclaimed.
And with our prize, we left the Center and drove to our next stop at Patagonia Lake.
Bird Count: I shot nine new birds here, and lots of previously seen birds. I’m pretty sure that if we had stayed another hour I could have found five more. What a fun, fun bird place. My total in early afternoon on day five in Arizona is up to 35 birds.
Conscious Engagement 
Yay! for getting the hummingbird in focus. I know how that goes (not getting the camera to focus). How do you “track down” the names of the bird species? Do you use an app for that? I’m loving how these fun posts from your AZ trip just keep comin’! :o)
Glad you are having fun with the Arizona posts. I found that on this trip I took many more photos than I usually do, so it made sense to break them up into multiple blog posts for each place we stopped.
Solving the mystery of each bird is a fun challenge for me, and I’m getting better at it. I use the Cornell Ornithology website the most. That one seems to have every bird I find in the US, and I like the way it’s set up, with photos of males, females, and juveniles, as well as videos and audio clips. But my first step is the browser search bar. I type in something like “small bird black white yellow.” Then I peruse the images that come up. If I can’t find the exact bird, I click something close, get the name of it, then put it into the Cornell site. They have a “similar birds” section at the bottom of each specific bird page. If that doesn’t do it, I try again. “Arizona bird yellow head chest” and try it again. Then carefully compare it to the example birds you find, paying special attention to beak shape, colour around eyes, and distinctions of where the markings are: chest, neck, head, etc. Sometimes I really struggle, like with the Abert’s Towhee in this post. The most distinctive thing about it is the shape of the beak, so I just searched and searched for bird types with a similar beak, like grosbeaks and cardinals and I found a “towhee” gallery and viola! Finally found it.
The count is getting up there, the final tally will be good. Love the little woodpecker in the water pool.
Yes stupid camera focus, I have the same issues when in a panic and even trying to get something static using the zoom 🙄
I think that was the problem: I panicked! I knew I had only seconds and I knew not to trust my camera, or my eyes. Oof. Glad I got one though. The bird tally is fun. It’s already higher than I was expecting.
Just read the next post, well done. Glad you had fun 👍😀
More excellent birding – I like the way you have picked many out against the bark. I expect you know that automatic focus will always favour the foreground. As if the anniversary couple won’t guess who paid for their meal
Ooh, I agree the bark photos are nice – especially when the bark is so pretty, like it is here. Yes, the foreground gets me with autofocus. My last camera had a feature where I could focus somewhere I wanted, then hold down the button to take the photo, and while holding it down I could move the camera anywhere I wanted and that focus would remain. This camera purports to have that feature, but as soon as I depress the button for the photo, it changes focus. Gah! The better option is manual, except that makes me extremely slow, and hummingbirds are fast. *sigh* And yes, I’m sure they knew exactly who to blame. 🙂