A few years back when we decided to make our own Christmas cards, we thought it would be cool to use a red and green bird, but the only Arizona species combining those holiday colors is the spectacular elegant trogon.  It seemed inappropriate to grace a winter greeting with a summer breeding bird that migrated south into Mexico when the weather turned cold.

That's all recently changed because elegant trogons, at least one or two each year, have begun overwintering north of the border in an area that has become Arizona's number one wintertime birding destination, Patagonia Lake State Park, 15 miles north of Nogales off State Highway 82.  Prior to the winter of 1997-98 this jewel of the state park system was a well-kept birding secret centered around its popular 250 acre fishing lake.  That winter a Nutting's flycatcher, a rare vagrant from Mexico was discovered near the park, and now birders migrating south for sunny skies, warmer temperatures, and a great birding experience have begun flocking to the park each winter.

The attraction for the real snowbirds, the ones with feathers and wings, is the fortuitous combination of mild winter weather, an abundance of water, and a wonderful diversity of habitat.  In winter the lake itself attracts a variety of ducks, cormorants, and even the occasional loon and bald eagle, and many of the park's long-term campers maintain seed and citrus feeders for hummingbirds, thrashers, northern cardinals, and the less common pyrrhuloxias, the beautiful wine and gray "desert" cardinals.

A hiking trail from the campground drops down into State Trust land along the southeast corner of the lake accessing a cattail marsh with wrens and rails, meanders through mesquite bosques, a favored haunt for a variety of flycatchers and the trogons, and finally follows Sonoita Creek east through extensive willow forests where warblers, woodpeckers and thrushes forage.  The prize along the creek is the highly sought green kingfisher and unexpected eastern vagrants such as Louisiana waterthrush.

Birders as well as serious hikers will enjoy a new trail which runs west for seven miles through the recently opened Sonoita Creek Natural Area toward Rio Rico.  Many of the areas bird specialties, including trogons, have been seen in the riparian habitat along this trail.  For adventurous birders who know water birds may be approached more closely in canoes and kayaks, there are two islands and 12 boat-only accessible lakeshore campsites where you can score your own very private site and watch the huge, mixed blackbird flocks return across the sunset from the agricultural fields in the Santa Cruz Valley to the reed beds at the east end of the lake.

Patagonia Lake State Park is birder friendly.  In addition to canoe rentals, there's a visitor's center with interpretive displays detailing the fauna and flora of the area, a park birdlist, guided birdwalks during the week, and two naturalist-led boat trips up the lake on weekends.  The best amenity for camping birders may be the newly rebuilt hot showers.

Dress in layers.  Wintertime lows in the park may be below freezing before sunrise, but sunny afternoons are hot.  Take waterproof boots or wool socks and old tennis shoes for sloshing up the creek to the east looking for kingfishers.  And if your companion's not a birder, give him or her the car keys.  There are wineries in Sonoita, shops in Tubac, and Kartchner Caverns is only two hours away.

For veteran birders the allure of Patagonia Lake in winter is the now anticipated but deliciously unpredictable juxtaposition of incongruous species--an elegant trogon in the bosque harassing a great horned owl as a bald eagle passes overhead prospecting for injured ducks on the lake.  And the trogons, the stars of this wintertime show, are easier to see here in winter than in the steep, shaded canyons of the Sky Islands where they nest in summer.  Go anytime through March.