Today we made the long trip to the Chiricahuas for our second visit of the trip. I was hoping to get there reasonably early but we had a good 2 hour drive ahead of us, admittedly on the freeway for the majority of it.
Last week we'd took the long route (on better roads). This time I decided to try cutting in south from San Simon. This would save us some miles and hopefully time, besides it was a change! The graded road from the motorway was thankfully good and we made our way south towards Portal.
The first noteworthy sighting after leaving the interstate was this cracking Loggerhead Shrike...
It took us around 45 minutes to reach the outskirts of the town and I was feeling good about our new route until we came around a bend and saw this...
Oh dear, I thought. You can see a building to the right of the tree. That is how close we were to Portal. I'd been told quite a few horror stories about cars trying to cross washes in flood including one by Richard were a young lad had tried to drive through one in Tucson and died. We didn't have a 4x4 and it looked pretty strong to me...
We couldn't cross. A few hundred yards away and yet? There was no-one else around...on either side. We would have to go back!! Yep, right back to the Interstate and into New Mexico as we did last week. Bit of a nightmare really.
We found out later that there had been a violent thunderstorm over the Mountains the day before which had produced the flood. The water just runs out into the desert eventually. Trouble is it can take many hours to do so.
Let's move on.
We reached Portal by route two around 2pm. We grabbed some lunch and then re-visited the feeding station at the Jasper/Rodrigues yard again. Much the same fayre a son our previous visit until this wonderful creature popped very briefly (5 seconds) into view...
As I've said before how special a bird is depends on your perspective. Bullock's Oriole is a common bird in the region BUT this was the only one I saw during my trip and...WHAT A BIRD!
We then took the Paradise road from Portal. I intended to do this anyway but the decision was made for us by the flooding. The "main" road was blocked. We wound our way up the interesting road and eventually reached the village, thankfully not having to cross anymore washes. Eventually we found the place I wanted to see...The George Walker House. I'd stayed here in 2005 so I'd obviously met Jackie and Winston previously. I just wanted to say hello.
The house is a well known site for birders and there was a group just leaving as I arrived. The sites star bird is the local Juniper Titmouse, unfortunately we'd arrived during a period when it didn't tend to visit. I introduced myself to Jackie and took a seat on the porch. I explained what had happened regarding the flood and she mentioned it was "bad" on the western side as well. This was the route I intended to take to get back to Green Valley. It was at this point she kindly made the offer that we could stay in the GWH as it was vacant...for free!
To receive this level of hospitality was frankly very moving and I thanked her sincerely for her kind offer. I went back to the car to tell Louise and the decision was made...we would stay the night. We'd done a lot of travelling and would have had an uncertain journey back due to the conditions. It's a holiday after all!
I left Jackie to show Louise the ropes of the house and I had the last hour back at the Jasper/Rodrigues feeders. The main bird of note was a visit from another Blue-throated Hummingbird very late in the day...
These photos were taken at 7.15pm and it was almost dark...the image below is poor due to the very poor light but it shows the throat well...
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