Southern Arizona and New Mexico

April 16.2025

After leaving the Tucson area, we spent 10 days at one of our favorite state parks, Patagonia Lake State Park. Patagonia Lake State Park is located midway between Patagonia and Nogales Arizona and is basically situated in the middle of nowhere, but it is very peaceful. We did lots of hiking both on the birding loop in the park and in the adjoining Sonito Creek Natural area. The birding loop in the park is a riparian area and in the natural area it is more desert terrain with a bit of riparian area in the middle. We were always on the lookout for birds. We saw a young Coopers Hawk almost daily and also Gray Hawks, Northern Cardinals, Vermillion Flycatchers, several types of warblers, and many more. 

Coopers Hawk

Nesting Herons - we saw 6 nests

Green Tailed Towhee

Northern Cardinal

White-Faced Ibis

Yellow Warbler

We made two trips to Patagonia to visit the Paton Center for hummingbirds and saw 4 different species of hummingbirds as well as Lazuli Buntings. 

Lazuli Buntings

Broad-Billed Hummingbird

Costa Hummingbird

Violet-crowned Hummingbird

Anna’s Hummingbird

Black Chinned Hummingbird

We also went over to the Sonoita and Elgin area and went wine tasting at three different wineries: Rune Wines, Callaghan Vineyards and Dos Cabezas Wineworks. It was a fun day. Mark did some kayaking and we went on a guided bird walk sponsored by the park. It was a very relaxing 10 days and went by very fast.

Rune Wines

Callaghan Vineyards

Dos Cabezas Wineworks

Our next stop was for 2 nights at City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico  about half way between Deming and Silver City.The park is at about 5,200 feet and as far as you could see in all directions there was nothing but desert scrubland. The park has huge rock formations formed by a volcano about 34 million years ago. There are trails all through them. Most of the campsites were nestled in the rocks.  It was really neat. The only negative thing was that it got up to the mid 90’s both days we were there and it was really too hot to do much after 10:30 am and before 6pm. The sunset walks were very nice though.

On April 11, we left City of Rocks State Park and headed back to Arizona. We stopped for a little while in Silver City, New Mexico and visited the Silver City Museum and learned all about its history (mostly mining). It is a cute little city and there seems to be a lot to do in the area.  We continued to Roper Lake State Park just south of Safford, Az

Silver City Museum

It was still very hot there, but we walked around the park in the early part of the day. Mark did a bit of kayaking. We went out to lunch to beat the heat and we drove up a ways on the scenic Swift Highway (rt 366) into the Coronado National Forest. We started at about 2,000 ft and drove up to 6,000 ft so there was a lot of vegetation change. It was very beautiful. 

Coronado National Forest

Painted Redstart

Yellow-Headed Blackbirds

Lots of them!

We left Roper Lake on Sunday, April 13 and drove west towards Phoenix. We stopped at Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior. It is another of our favorite places to visit in Arizona, and this time was no different. We walked the trails and saw the cactus and plants and really enjoyed ourselves. We spent about 2 1/2 hours there and continued to Lost Dutchmen State Park near Apache Junction. 

Ocotillo

Prickly Pear

Prickly Pear

Boojum Tree

Thanks for reading! More next time.