[aguila]

Hello

I am planing a trip to Arizona / New Mexico (and maybe northern Mexico)
to go birding. the tripp will be 2 or 3 weeks.

I have never been there so I am now wondering what would be the best time
of the year ?
I am especially interested in owls and raptors, but of course also want to see
all the other birds.

this will be a bird watching only holiday (and if possible photographing some of them).

are there any birding trails one could follow ?

other wildlife like coyotes would be interesting too.

any information is welcome.

Markus

[streatham]

Hi Aguila,

These three sites are absolutely fantastic for birding NM - my friend just used them to organise most of her tour to NM and was very successful finding target birds. I think birding in winter is really popular there at the moment - plenty of tour companies seem to do NM in winter trips. I have only been in summer as I have family down in Las Cruces a word of warning it gets almost too hot to bird areas down south much past mid-morning.

http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Art...nNewMexic.html
http://www.audubon.org/chapter/nm/sw..._specials.html
http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/recr...ding/index.htm

Luke

[Alf King]

I've only been to Southeast Arizona but that filled a two week holiday in spring. This in my opinion is the best time to visit as you get the best of all of the migrants (some of them passage) as well as the resident birds.

Sites that I used were:

http://www.hummingbirdworld.com/

http://www.sabo.org/

http://www.tucsonaudubon.org/birding/index.htm

The book A Birder's Guide to Southeastern Arizona by Richard Cachor Taylor (ABA/Lane series) was invaluable.

[Dave B Smith]

There are also a number of trip reports on this forum for Arizona that could be helpful. Just do a "search" in the Vacational Trip Reports forum for "Arizona" in the title and you'll get reports like this:
Arizona Trip Report and this: Another Arizona Trip Report

[Katy Penland]

Hi, Markus,

If you haven't already, you might want to check out the Arizona archive here on BF. There are several threads, but if you start out with the one called just "Arizona" it will give you general info and even more links than what have already been suggested here.

http://www.birdforum.net/forumdisplay.php?f=384

One thing I would really urge you to do is to join the AZ-NM birding listserve, whose URL is mentioned at the beginning of my first post in the "Arizona" thread. It's free and it will not only start to give you an idea of what's being seen in both states, but if you post a similar question there like you have done here, you'll get a lot of extremely helpful responses from the people who do the most birding in both regions, especially SE Arizona.

Once you have a better idea of where you want to go and when, if you have any specific questions, I'll do my best to help answer them or put you in touch with folks who can.

[Ursidae69]

Southeastern AZ has some of the best birding in the country. Personally, I think the best time is spring. The San Pedro River is great for birding, lots of Vermillion Flycatchers. I am going to SE AZ myself the end of April to explore the Chiricahuas, I want to see my first trogon. Closer to Tucson are the Huachuca Mountains and there you'll find Miller Canyon where the hummingbirds are everywhere.

[aguila]

thanks everyone for the great answer.
if time permits I will be in Arizona in Spring 2007.
I was hoping to got this year, but plans have changed and I will go
to north Germany for Lesser Spottet Eagles.

but next year I will go Arizona.

Markus