Click for a larger view
Cloudy, dreary day today, good to to take a couple of hours and draw. This is an Elegant Trogon, a bird with a range that just crosses into the U.S. in far southern Arizona.
A few years ago, I had a good chance to see one, but missed out. There’s a wonderful B&B we’ve stayed at several times just outside of Tucson. I’ve had a blast birding around Tucson itself, but there are some rather famous birding areas south of Tucson, near the Mexican border. One of these is “Ramsey Canyon”, an area managed by the Nature Conservancy. On the last trip we took to Tucson, we drove down to check out Ramsey Canyon.
It was a wonderful visit. The canyons in far southern Arizona are also famous for the variety of hummingbird species that can show up, including many tropical hummingbirds that only rarely are found in the U.S. We certainly saw a lot of hummingbirds, and other species. But alas…we missed out on seeing an Elegant Trogon. As we were walking the trail, I asked the TNC person that we came across, and she said people had just seen it minutes before, but then it flew up higher into the canopy. We looked for a bit, but never did see it.
So…like pretty much everything else I’ve been drawing…here’s a drawing of something I haven’t seen before. Gorgeous birds, hopefully someday I’ll get another chance to see one in the wild.
