Day 12, we are spending a day in New Mexico’s biggest city: Albuquerque!
Early in the morning, we departed from our hotel in Santa Rosa, and arrived at Sandia Crest of the Cibola NF. As soon as we approached the feeders, a group of Rosy-Finches flew in and landed on the tree top. There are Black and Brown-capped, two lifers already! Beside them, we still need the third Rosy-Finch: Gray-crowned. After a long time looking at several groups of rosy-finches as they arrived and departed, we finally came across a rosy-finch with gray cheeks! It is a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch and even an iconic Hepburn’s subspecies with gray cheek!
After getting all the rosy-finches, we headed downhill, into the special pinyon-juniper habitat! We stopped at the ranger station and started to walk on the trail behind it through a well grown juniper forest, in search of the juniper specialist: Juniper Titmouse.
Just a little into the forest, I heard a few calls of “chickadedede dedede dedede…”. It is the Juniper Titmouse! I made a few pishing noises and three of them soon hopped through the juniper right in front of us!
After the Juniper Titmouse, we decided to stake out the Harris’s Sparrow at Shining River Bosque Trails in Rio Grande Valley SP since it is still early. The trial has few birds and the only bird seems to be the White-crowned Sparrows the Harris’s Sparrow was associated with. We examined the flock for a while and finally found the big Harris’s. They soon jumped away and we checked the visitor center area and ended the day by 5 lifers!
ebird checklists
