Friday was a clear, bright colorful New Mexico Fall day, so Ms Canyon and I packed up our cameras, binoculars, and lunch and headed south to Water Canyon. Water Canyon is in the eastern side of the Magdalena Mountains, about 20 miles west of Socorro, NM. After you drive over through grassey range land, you enter the mouth of the Canyon and are suddenly in a lush, dense forest of pines, junipers, and oak trees.
We were looking for Acorn Woodpeckers, but we also found a few other great birds as well.
Solitaires often call with a single note that can be hard to locate visually. It took a few minutes to find this one. It helps that they like to perch at the very top of a tree.
Acorn Woodpeckers (as the name implies) collect acorns and stash them in small holes in dead trees. There is a good crop of acorns this year, and the forest floor is littered with them in the oak groves.
Another handsome bird we saw was a Red Napped Sapsucker. They look a little like the Acorns, but check out the little red patch on the back of his neck.
The real treat was a female Williamson’s Sapsucker. She was very shy and it took me 10 minutes of waiting until she turned around through the juniper fronds.
Not a big list that day but some real quality birds!