Bird Watching at 8000' in the Santa Catalina Mts

Let's drive and/or carpool up to the 8000' altitude and meet at Le Buzz at 7:30 am and then head up to the Palisades Visitor Nature Center for a morning of high altitude bird watching. The nature center sits on the left side of the Mt Lemmon Highway and is very easy to find.

**https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/coronado/recarea/?recid=77641**

The Yellow-eyed Junco you see above was working on the forest floor foraging on the ground for seeds and insects, uncovering them by shuffling or scratching in the leaf litter. There will be warblers, grosbeaks, acorn woodpeckers, gnatcatchers, flycatchers, buntings and hopefully many other species that maybe some of you have never seen.

I asked if we could as a group utilize the back parking area which is large and flat and they told me at the nature center that we could. There's a road that goes back into the forest also that we will explore. It stays at or on the ridgeline so it's relatively flat also. There are a couple of hummingbird feeders at the nature center too.

Let's wait to see how many individuals will want to sign up and then design a carpool once we get to Le Buzz on the corner of E Tanque Verde and Catalina Highway. I look forward to seeing you all soon! Hopefully this will be a trip that also includes the change of colors in the canopy. FUN!!