One of the hardest things for me sometimes is deciding when to pack it in and go home. Sometimes other obligations make that decision easy. Sometimes weather does the prodding … or even the commanding. But often, there’s really no good answer. I find this especially true when I’m sitting and waiting for something to happen at what I think should be a good location. Am I being impatient, or is it time to go? And that was the problem I faced this morning.
My plan was to spend a couple hours at McDowell Mountain Park. I figured it would get pretty hot soon which is why I got up before sunrise and headed out. The Saguaro’s are blooming and there’s often a lot of activity around their blossoms. So my plan was to look for saguaros with nice “bouquets” and wait to see if any birds would arrive. I bring a little three legged folding stool with me when I do this and will drape some camo netting over myself to create a “pseudo” hide in the hopes that my presence isn’t too disturbing. I’m not sure the netting really helps, but it keeps the sun off and lets a breeze blow through, so what the heck.
I’d set up a couple times and had collected a few nice but not exceptional shots when I noticed it was 8:30A already. I’d already overstayed my planned time a bit. But the weather was still almost cool, there was a nice breeze, and I could see a rather large and bright “bouquet” of saguaro blossoms a few hundred yards up the wash I was standing in.. So I figured I’d set up for a third time out by those blossoms. So that’s what I did and I got some nice shots early of a Curve-billed Thrasher. But birds didn’t seem to like the blossoms as much as I did. And not much was happening. I had noticed a pair of Flycatchers (I’m pretty sure Brown-crested Flycatchers) going to and from their nest in the saguaro with the blooms. But there there were long intervals between activity. There was activity from some Gila Woodpeckers on some other nearby cacti. Should I move? Hard to say. I chose my standard grocery line strategy and stayed where I was.
Curve-billed Thrasher
An hour passed. I had some near misses with that flycatcher pair, but nothing resulted in a good photo. The cactus was putting their entrance into shadow and they didn’t spend much time at the entrance. But still, there had been some opportunities when they flew into the nest and I had switched my attention from the blossoms being ignored by all but the bees to their nest entrance. But an hour can be a long time sitting in that little chair and it was beginning to warm up – probably hitting the 90s now. Also, I didn’t bring anything to drink since the plan was to only spend a couple hours. I looked at my phone and it was about 9:25A. I decided that I’d pack it at 9:30A. I have no idea why 9:30A is better than 9:31A, 9:29A or “right now.” But that’s the time I arbitrarily chose.
And that’s when I noticed one of the flycatchers coming in from the distance. Cool. I was hoping that the bird would “hover” a bit before landing. They do that sometimes and it gives me more opportunities to get shots with the bird still in the air. So as the bird came within a couple feet of its nest entrance, I pressed and held the camera’s remote release. No hover. It just landed and went into the nest. Bummer. Well, not quite. I looked at the pictures I had just shot. I guess I got lucky. There was one nice shot of the bird flaring its wings right before landing. It had good focus and very little motion blur. Cool!
Brown-crested Flycatcher
But this brought me back to my dilemma. Waiting the hour got me a nice photo. Was it time to go now, or was I passing up some great shot opportunities by not waiting another hour? If a little waiting is good, is waiting too long even better? How can you know? Well I guess you can’t. Bottom line is that I was getting thirsty and it was getting warmer. So I packed up and headed back. For all I know, two minutes later all kinds of birds landed on those blossoms and had a big party in my absence – or maybe nothing happened all day. Yep, I find it very hard to decide when to pack it in. I guess I always will.
