Most of my friends from out of state, who have never visited Arizona, picture our beautiful homeland as a dry, dusty brown and sandy desert, more like the endless stretches of West Texas than the green expanses we know so well. If I tell them there are more than two thousand species of plants in the Sonoran Desert, they think I’m doing stand-up, and if I want to see their eyes roll, I let them know our desert also has 300 species of cacti, not just our iconic saguaro. The truth is our deserts are full of green aromatic and flowering bushes, trees and flowers. Once I’ve dispelled their erroneous concept of our desert, I gradually introduce them to our mountains. After all, too much education at once may be too much to handle.
One approach is to describe the six life zones you cover along the 25-mile highway to Mt. Lemmon’s 9,159-foot summit, a drive equivalent to the biosphere from Mexico to Canada. Or, if you simply want to win a little pocket change, ask them to name the state with the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest, which might surprise some of you as Arizona with two point six million acres. Obviously, there are lots of desirable destinations spread across nearly three million acres of ponderosa, but one desirable hangout is the community of Pinetop-Lakeside, a cool summer getaway at some seven thousand feet up in the White Mountains. The drive to Pinetop-Lakeside; north on 77 to Globe, 60 to the Salt River Canyon and Show Low, then 260 to Pinetop, is a spectacular three-hour photo-op itself.
This part of Arizona embraces Navajo and Apache counties, more than 20 lakes, elevations from 6,000 to more than 9,000 feet and lots of birds. There are many accommodation choices from private rental homes to resort hotels, with a wide range of rates. Some places are more attractive than others for birding, with forest-adjacent decks and/or well-stocked feeders. One of our favorite destinations with both features is the WorldMark Condominiums where the forest is pine-oak, and the birds are abundant. There are more than a dozen eBird hotspots, including lakes, reservoirs, ponds, creeks and forests, all easily accessible from anyplace you choose to stay.
We recently rented a three-bedroom home in the Pinetop Country Club area that had a large deck, lots of pine and oak trees and a big, fenced back yard. Common birds in this area include Steller’s Jay, White-breasted and Pygmy Nuthatch, Dark-eyed Junco, Acorn, Lewis’s and Hairy Woodpecker, Mountain Chickadee and American Crow, none of which are common to SaddleBrooke. One of our highlight birds there was one common to SaddleBrooke, but a rarity in 7,000-foot Pinetop-Lakeside, a Greater Roadrunner. Nearby, Woodland Lake is an eBird hotspot that draws lots of birds and more than a few birders. At Woodland Lake, our favorites included two large flocks of American Robin and Western Tanager, which were present for several days dining on Oregon grape. McNary, on the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation just south and east of Pinetop-Lakeside, is home to two eBird hotspots, both of which produced a lot of unexpected birds, including White-faced Ibis and many Lewis’s Woodpecker, busily secreting nearby acorns into holes they were drilling in a cluster of pine trees, sustenance silos for the coming winter.
Late summer/fall is especially rewarding in this high-elevation country when triple digit temperatures are common back home, but we’ve ventured up here at all times of the year and have never been disappointed. Nights are colder in December, and sometimes snow hangs from the pines or builds along the roadsides. But the chickadees, nuthatches and jays are still there. And you get to watch the Acorn and Lewis’s Woodpeckers raid their summer silos.
If you have questions or comments about SaddleBrooke’s birds, or to receive emailed information about bird walks led by Bob and Prudy, call (520) 825-9895 or send an email to bobandpru@gmail.com. Previously published articles can be found at birdingthebrookeandbeyond.com.