Pinal Signal

It was a beautiful morning when George Wall (leader), Dan Bohlmann, Chuck Kangas and Vera Markham headed towards Globe and the Pinal Mountains. At Judy’s Cook House, we met Joan Barker, Tillie Chew, Phil Evanstock and Andrée Tarby. Phil had driven up from Madera Canyon where he had been birding in order to join us. After a nice breakfast, we headed for the mountains.

We saw many lowland birds like Phainopepla as we started up the sixteen miles of dirt road to the peak. We even saw a Red-tailed Hawk catch a snake and stop to eat it. At the picnic ground about half way up, we stopped to bird and it was here that we ran into Grace’s Virginia’s Warblers and Painted Redstart.

We reached Pinal Peak at 10:00 A.M. where a cool temperature of 67 degrees awaited us. The first bird we saw here was a Short-tailed Hawk soaring in all its glory right over us. The previous day, Dr David Pearson had reported this rare sighting very close to where we saw it. All eight of us were ecstatic to be able to observe this same bird and we all had extremely good looks at it. After birding the Pinal Peak area, we drove over to the Signal Peak area and walked the road to the ranger station (7,800 feet ) adding birds to our list like the Hairy Woodpecker as we did so.

We ate lunch at one of the picnic areas and then headed back to the Phoenix pleased with the 40 species of birds that we saw or heard. They were Turkey Vulture, Short-tailed Hawk, Swainson’s Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Gambel’s Quail, Rock Pigeon, Band-tailed Pigeon, Mourning Dove, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Rufous Hummingbird (female), Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker (red-shafted), Western-wood Pewee, Cordilleran Flycatcher (H), Ash-throated Flycatcher, Cassin’s Kingbird, Western Kingbird, Violet-green Swallow, House Wren, Northern Mockingbird, Curved-billed Thrasher, Hermit Thrush, a very blue, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Mountain Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, Steller’s Jay, Western Scrub-Jay, Common Raven, Spotted Towhee, Canyon Towhee, Black-headed Grosbeak, Northern Cardinal, Western Tanager, Virginia’s Warbler, Grace’s Warbler, Painted Redstart, Warbling Vireo, House Sparrow, Bullock’s Oriole and Brown-headed Cowbird.