Miller Canyon: A quiet place to sit and watch

You can have the beach. You can have San Diego and the zoo and Sea World. You’ll get no competition from me for space in Southern California. I’ll take the mountains. And I’ll take the mountains close to home here in Arizona.

I’ll take the cool heights, the leisurely pace, the Ponderosa pines and manzanita bushes, and the birds.

There is no better place to go in the United States for bird-watching, particularly hummingbirds, than southern Arizona. There is no better place that I know of to enjoy the hummingbirds and mountains with less exertion than Miller Canyon, a few miles south of Sierra Vista.

Think about sitting out on your patio at about 5,800 feet, a drink in your hand, the Huachuca Mountains towering above. Now close your eyes and imagine a slew of hummingbirds putting on a dazzling show of flight and color as they jockey for position around feeding stations just feet away.

If that thought in any way lessens the tension in the back of your neck and floats a serene daydream across your mind, read on, because there is such a place.

The place is Beatty’s Guest Ranch. On a weekend in early September, we lived that daydream amid the ranch’s apple orchards at our cabin door. When ambition aroused us we walked maybe 75 yards up the hill into the forest and took a seat on a bench in an amphitheater setting where about a dozen hummingbird feeders attracted eight species of those tiny but sometimes pugnacious birds. The record at the ranch set in 2002 and matched in 2006 is 14 species.

Among them were Rufous, White-eared, Magnificent, Blue-throated and Violet-crowned hummingbirds. You won’t see these species at your backyard feeder in the East Valley.

The Magnificent and Blue-throats are the biggest, but my favorite is the Rufous. They’re pugnacious little rust-colored hummers that migrate from as far away as Alaska to as far away as Argentina, or so I’m told.

I’m no expert on their migration patterns, but I can personally attest to their pugnacity when it comes to wanting a feeder all to themselves. These alpha hummers spread their tail feathers and buzz around mimicking 0.12 ounces of terror.

By the time you’ve read this, you’ll have missed most of the hummingbird season, which comes to a close in late September, but it’s never too late to plan for next year. Nor is it too late just to escape the Valley’s endless summer and make an October trip to Miller Canyon.

Jake, Chance, Sam and the Beattys’ other dogs will come by and greet you and wait for a pat on the head. Tom Beatty Jr., who tends to the feeders and cares for the apple orchard, will likely drop by, too, to make sure everything is all right.

And if you have more ambition than I do, you can put on your hiking boots and head out into Coronado National Forest.

If you go

You can e-mail the Beatty family and make arrangements for a visit and get directions by calling (520) 378-2728 or going to their Web site: http://users.wildblue.net/beattysguestranch/

The accommodations are not fancy, but they are comfortable. We stayed in cabin A, which had a stove, microwave, refrigerator, a comfortable bed and a great picture window. We brought in our food.

There are local as well as chain restaurants five to 10 miles away in the valley, but driving up and down nearly three miles of rutted dirt road to get there didn’t appeal to us.