Date: 11/12/25 11:23 am From: dpsiminski (via aznmbirds Mailing List) <aznmbirds...> Subject: [AZNMbirds] San Pedro River Birding Walk
This morning, six local birders and two from Chicago participated in The
Friends of the San Pedro River’s Birding Walk from the San Pedro House. We
birded a loop south of the San Pedro House within the San Pedro Riparian
National Conservation Area. We saw 32 species of birds.
When the night sky is clear and the air calm, the earth radiates heat to the
sky and all the cold air in the entire San Pedro River Valley flows downhill
and pools at the river. This morning that pool of cold air at the San Pedro
House was 30 degrees Fahrenheit! By the end of the walk, the air warmed up to
70 as the sun heated the earth and the air started to move and stir up the
cold pool. As a result, the birds were very quiet at the start of the walk
but began to stir as the morning warmed, as did the mosquitoes.
The birds of the day were a Black Phoebe at Black Phoebe Pond and a Belted
Kingfisher at Kingfisher Pond. Sparrows put on a modest show today with eight
species, but numbers and total number of species were relatively low compared
to recent years. Perhaps the paltry crop of aster seedheads in the fields can
account for this. The only sparrow that we saw in relatively good numbers was
the Spotted Towhee. Usually, we will see a few each fall/winter on the San
Pedro Trails, but not four on one walk. Other locations along the river also
show large numbers of Spotted Towhees this autumn. Why? Who knows?
The Friends of the San Pedro River leads birding walks on the second and
fourth Wednesday of each month. For the month of November, the walks leave at
7:00a from the BLM’s San Pedro House south of State Route 90 just west of the
San Pedro River. We walk about 4km, and we are out for about three hours.
Bring your own binoculars, a hat and water.
The next San Pedro River birding walk is on Wednesday, 26 November, at 7:00a.
See you there.
Pete Siminski
Friends of the San Pedro River
Sierra Vista AZ
