Pole and I arrived in Albuquerque on Sunday to do some vacationing and some birding. That’s why there’s no birding entry until today, Tuesday. This isn’t a Big Year for us, so we don’t have to be psycho birding every single second. So after fooling around in ABQ for a day or so, we headed north to Santa Fe, but instead of viewing the beautiful colonial city, our first stop was the Randall Dewey Audubon Center. Psycho.

There was a naturalist there who really knew her stuff, and she told us what was around. It was already the afternoon when we got there, but we took our time. We walked down to a lake and then hung out at the center, checking out the feeders and bushes. Since the Southwest is a new habitat for us, there were lots of lifers:

SPOTTED TOWHEE
WESTERN SCRUB-JAY
MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE
BUSHTIT
TOWNSEND’S SOLITAIRE
CANYON TOWHEE

For some reason (she’s better?), Pole saw most of these before I did, and so I was goddamming a lot. The Mountain Chickadee was my 300th bird, a nice little fellow to have that honor. (It was Pole’s 320th.) All these lifers were nice, but the chickadee was the prettiest. And as often happens, once we saw it, we kept seeing it and seeing it and seeing it.

The naturalist told us we might see a Pinyon Jay at Ortiz Park, a place where she walks her dog. We made the trip, and it seemed like that’s where all of Santa Fe walks their dogs; the place was packed. We walked around a while, but no jay. However, we did see the last lifer of the day, a SAY’S PHOEBE. A good end to a short day of birding.