Saturday, June 10, 2017

Flagstaff Birding Tour

A Bullock's Oriole.
Today was the beginning of our guided bird trip to the Flagstaff area. After a long day visiting quite a few beautiful areas and seeing many birds, especially many new ones, we were invited to our guide's home for dinner. From his back deck, we saw the beautiful oriole in the photo above.

We loved walking among pines and aspens, searching for birds.

We also spent quite a bit of time in this burned-out pine forest...
An unusual species, the three-toed woodpecker, lives in and near the burned out forest, eating the beetles that
live on the dead wood. After a long and frustrating search, we finally saw the bird in this photo.
We saw a total of seven species of woodpecker today,
including this Williamson's Sapsucker.
Aspen trees have eyes!
Also at our guide's home: a pinyon jay.

Our guide and his wife, who cooked us a marvelous dinner including a pie.

If you ever want to take a great bird tour, here is a link to tours organized by Field Guides Birdwatching Tours and guided by John Coons, our guide:


4 comments:

Tina said...

Great photos! I have never seen an oriole in real life, just photons. Or the Pinyon Jay. Flagstaff is on our list of places to visit when we can travel. Thanks for sharing those photos and giving the link for the birdwatching tour.

Beth F said...

Looks like a great trip! I haven't been to Flagstaff in years, and I wasn't interested in birds at that time of my life. Looks like I missed out.

Claudia said...

I especially love that opening photo of the beautiful yellow oriole.

gluten Free A_Z Blog said...

wow - a bird tour and dinner- doesn't get much better than that. Great photos too