Agua Fria

On this three-and-a-half hour bird walk we tried the Yellow-billed Cuckoo counting technique being used by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in the three-month summer cuckoo count being conducted along the monument’s watercourses. This fieldtrip attracted four SAS members – Chuck Kangas, Bea Raymond, Joy Dolhanczyk and myself, and an Australian birder and conservationist, Leon Trembath. The walk covered much the same area as the May trip.

Playing the cuckoo tapes attracted four birds including one probable pair. Two of these birds were well outside the G&F count area and the other two probably were counted earlier. In the three-mile stretch of the river from the Willcox Ranch to Baby Canyon there may be as many as ten cuckoos.