One good Bisbee Post Deserves Another

March 7. 2015

We returned to Bisbee on a hot tip that black-chinned sparrows were to be found up Brewery Gulch.  We parked downtown, passed by an explanatory historical marker

Past the touristy Olive Oil tasting room,

Past the historic hotel district,

Past the graffiti park,

Past the parked art cars 

(note Hilary Clinton campaign car)

Past “no fun allowed” Bisbee style

Past some of Bisbee’s many stairs

Past the gentrified

Past the funky

Past the merely derelict (note potential fixer upper you Bisbeephiles),

And past the seriously wacko hoarder (no photo here, he was working on his car).

We went past the old mining remnants

Up we went.  We met two young dreads out for a morning stroll. Or perhaps they were coming into town from

their squat in the countryside?

Finally when we were almost at the top

Where we could look back down and to the mountains beyond,

We finally heard the song of the black-chinned sparrow.

We also saw many other birds on our way up including this female black-chinned hummingbird,

a lifer for me and the bird of the day,

a ferruginous hawk, American pipits, new for this trip, and

we flushed two flocks of Montezuma Quails and saw Western Scrub Jays, which we haven’t seen since Lake Havasu.

We were almost back down to the houses when we spotted one, two, then three, black-chinned sparrows, so we probably didn’t have to hike as far as we did, but yet again, it was worth it, for the views, for the birds and for the interesting desert plants.