The Paton Center for Habitat?

By Matt Griffiths

A forest of giant sacaton grass in the Cuckoo Corridor, all photos by Matt Griffiths

There’s a lot more to the Paton Center than just hungry hummingbirds!

On any visit to the Paton Center for Hummingbirds you’re likely to see mixed in with the Inca Doves, Anna’s Hummingbirds, and Northern Cardinals, a handful of humans busily at work with shovels, buckets, and other assorted tools. These people are part of Tucson Audubon’s habitat restoration and invasive strike teams and their work is vital to the upkeep and expansion of the Center.

What began as a bank of feeders lovingly maintained by the Paton family is now a full-fledged example of the power of native plants and habitat to draw in a diverse array of birds and other wildlife. From activities such as invasive plant removal and cottonwood sapling propagation to pond creation and planting native plants, the Paton Center is a hive of activity that showcases habitat restoration. The current major projects occurring just beyond the Center’s original property are great examples of the stages of restoring pieces of land for the benefit of wildlife and especially birds.

Crew members tend to cottonwood saplings and assess a non-native elm to be removed

Paton Preserve

Tucson Audubon secured ownership of the roughly five-acre parcel between the Paton Center and the Nature Conservancy’s Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve in 2019 and has begun the early stage work of surveying the land and removing invasive plant species. This beautiful area contains many HUGE cottonwoods and a healthy population of mature netleaf hackberry, velvet mesquite, and unfortunately a large meadow of mostly invasive Johnson grass. This is the ground floor of restoring habitat, and crews have been battling with the challenge of determining the best methods of controlling this grass and the other major species there: tree of heaven, Siberian elm, and vinca (periwinkle). In time, this new part of the Paton Center will contain trails amidst an array of native plantings.

The mowed meadow of Johnson grass in the Paton Preserve with the giant cottonwoods of Sonoita Creek

This large Siberian elm will remain for now; treated tree of heaven stumps

Cuckoo Corridor South

An “intermediate” stage of restoration can be found immediately across Sonoita Creek from the Paton Center in the Cuckoo Corridor South, aka the Robin Rincon. Clearing invasives began on this one-and-a-half-acre parcel in early 2023, and now new plantings can be seen amongst the giant stumps of the Siberian elms that were removed. Native hackberry, black walnut, cottonwood, and sacaton grass will benefit many more birds than the elm, tree of heaven, and arundo that once dominated the site and provided little nutritional value. Non-native plants also do not support the native insect species that many birds rely on as a food source. There is currently no public access and it’s yet to be determined what that will look like.

New native plantings being watered in the Cuckoo Corridor South

Planting continues in the Corridor South

Cuckoo Corridor

Along with the Richard Grand Memorial Meadow, this five-acre area just east of the Paton Center shows the results of hard work and time in habitat recovery. What was once a monoculture of Johnson grass under the cottonwoods along Sonoita Creek in 2017 is now a forest of mature giant sacaton bunch grass. Plants are established and no longer need watering, and while walking the trail that meanders through the site, you scarcely see signs of all the work. Explore it yourself and rest a bit under one of three new shade structures, and if the season is right, listen to the croaks of Western Yellow-billed Cuckoos in the tall trees.

The Cuckoo Corridor trail meanders through a mature landscape where you can find new shade ramadas

A giant sacaton bunch grass will soon find a new home under the cottonwoods

You can help with this important work! If you’d like to be involved in making the Paton Center for Hummingbirds (and Habitat!) a better place for birds, there are several chances between now and February. Every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month Tucson Audubon is holding volunteer restoration days. See more info and sign up!

The pond in the Richard Grand Memorial Meadow is now a natural part of the Paton Center

Stay tuned for more updates on the exciting work happening at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds!

Matt Griffiths is the Communications Coordinator for Tucson Audubon.