I thought I’d start this post on a light note and show you a little Arizona sign humor.

This was on the road to Arivaca where we went for the first of the month Saturday morning bird walk.  It was a chilly morning but it warmed up  quickly and we had a pleasant  3 hour walk and found 33 birds.  Most interesting to me was a Gilded Flicker.  In Arizona we usually see red-shafted Flickers so this is an unusual find.

Here is a picture of the mountains from the road just up from where we are staying.

On Wednesday of that week the Tubac Festival of the Arts began and ran through Sunday.  The streets all around us were filled with tents of artists of all sorts and food vendors.  Not too busy until Friday, though, as it was cold and windy, especially on Wednesday.  But it warmed and brightened for the weekend and there were plenty of people then.

Annie from the Bird Store said she was looking for some help in the store a few days a week so Denny said he would be willing to help out.  I guess he was jealous that I had jobs and he wanted one, too.

Speaking of jobs I was asked to paint some birds on the patio wall of a birding friend’s house.  This is the same house I painted sunflowers on last year.  She only wanted birds she had seen at her house so I painted a Bullocks Oriole and a Cardinal and 3 more.

They were very difficult to paint on the brick surface and I couldn’t get much in the way of detail but she says she is enjoying looking at them so I guess I did all right.  I now have 2 more possible painting jobs to do.

On Friday, 2/14, my sister Betty came down to Tucson with a beading friend of hers.  They stayed at another beading friend’s house in Tucson.  Saturday morning we went to Tucson to spend the day with her.  We met her with her friends at Tohono Chul Botanical Gardens where we walked the trails and had a wonderful lunch.

Betty’s friends were tired of walking and decided to go back home while we thought we could go visit Sweetwater Wetlands with Betty.  Well that was a big mistake as they had just started construction on the main road going there and no matter how we tried to go around it we never quite got there and finally gave up and went to Reid State park.  It was such a beautiful day that lots of folks were in the park and at the zoo.  There was even a wedding party walking around.

On Sunday Betty and her friends came down to Tubac to see the painted Javelinas and have lunch.  We had another great lunch (good thing she didn’t stay too long or I would have gained 5 pounds!).  The lunch service was slow but it did give us a lot of time to visit which was the main point of being together.  Then as if we hadn’t had enough to eat we got some fruit burros for dessert.  Fruit burros are burritos filled with pie filling and deep fried then covered in cinnamon sugar and served with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

They all left late afternoon.  It was really great to see Bets as it’s been a long time since we’ve last seen her.  We walked home and decided we wanted to walk a little more so went over to the golf resort houses down the road.  It’s always fun for us to see what people do with their homes and these are quite large and nicely landscaped.  This is some kind of agave (I think) that we’re going to have to keep an eye on as it should bloom before we leave.

On Monday after pickleball we went up to Madera Canyon for a picnic and walk. We started up from the bottom at Proctor and ran into 3 deer.

Then we walked up further past my favorite Cottonwood tree,

to Whitehouse picnic area.  Denny decided to go back down at this point to get the car and meet me at Madera picnic area with our lunch.  As I hiked up the rest of the way I ran into several people who told me they had seen the Elegant Trogon along the trail.  I hiked up further and got to the picnic area but still didn’t find it but we ran into others who said it was about 150 feet down the trail. So when Denny arrived we both went down and ran into another man who had been looking for it and told us where he had just seen it.  As we walked down there we crossed two bridges and as we went across the second I looked up and sitting on a branch just ahead was the Trogon!

The second picture is a painting I had done of him.

This is a view of Mt. Wrightson from the trail.

On Tuesday we went on the usual bird walk but it was the first time since we’ve been here that the weather was really nice on a Tuesday.  This meant of course that we had a lot of people and had to break up into two groups.  The weather lately has been great and with the exception of Saturday when it might rain it looks like sunshine and high 60’s to mid 70’s for the next 10 days.  Can’t complain about that.

Let us know how you’re doing.  Love hearing from you.