On day 3 (28 April) we made an early start and drove south towards Tucson before the temperature was too high. Our target birding site was the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (map location B), which we had also visited in 2010 and enjoyed on the earlier trip.
As it’s a 2 hour drive from Phoenix to Tucson we missed the productive early morning birding time but still saw some interesting desert birds while walking along the trails.
After spending several hours at the Desert Museum we went for a late lunch at the Guadalajara Mexican Grill in east Tucson, the first of a number on Mexican meals we had during the trip.
Following our meal we made a brief visit to the Saguaro National Park East (map location C), but the birding was slow, although we enjoyed seeing the impressive saguaro cacti and the desert flora.
In the late afternoon we drove across town to our accommodation for the next two nights, the TownePlace Suites near Tucson Airport. The hotel was good and there was a handy diner just next door.
We spent 29 April (day 4) visiting Mt. Lemmon to the north of Tucson, which gave us a chance to see some of the birds that are found in the cooler conditions at higher elevations. Driving directly to the top, which is at an elevation of 9,000 feet, takes a couple of hours, but there are a lot of side trails and lookout points giving spectacular views that make it worth devoting a whole day to the visit. We started by taking the road to Molito Canyon at mile 5.5 on the Catalina Highway that leads to the top of the mountain.
The Molito trail is an excellent place to see Hooded Oriole, although there were a good number of other birds, including, Red-tailed Hawk, Brown-headed Cowbird, Ash-throated Flycatcher, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Bushtit, Lesser Goldfinch and Black-headed Grosbeak.
Continuing our journey up the mountain, once we reached the level of the pine-oak woodland we stopped at a couple of pull-ins to see some forest birds. The highlight was a Mexican Jay eating bugs on a tree, but we also enjoyed seeing the Acorn Woodpeckers.
Further up the mountain we took another side road down Rose Canyon that leads eventually to Rose Canyon lake. There were no birds on the lake but there was still plenty of activity in the forest on the way to the lake. Yellow-eyed Junco were on the ground and we got our first lifer of the day with the Rose-faced Warbler, although we got better photos of this species later. Soon after we got another new bird for us with Grace’s Warbler.
We then went to Incinerator Ridge Road, which we’d read was a good place to see Red-faced warbler, and so it proved. There we had close-up views of several of these birds and got the good photographs that we wanted.
By this time it was mid-afternoon so we continued our drive up the mountain to the town of Summerhaven where we had a burger at the Sawmill Run Restaurant before driving down the mountain and back to our hotel for our last night in Tucson.