BUG: Series(strings, dtype=ArrowDtype[timestamp]) raising

doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.4.rst

@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ Fixed regressions
 Bug fixes
 ~~~~~~~~~
 - Bug in :class:`Series` constructor raising DeprecationWarning when ``index`` is a list of :class:`Series` (:issue:`55228`)
+- Bug in :class:`Series` when trying to cast date-like string inputs to :class:`ArrowDtype` of ``pyarrow.timestamp`` (:issue:`56266`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Index.__getitem__` returning wrong result for Arrow dtypes and negative stepsize (:issue:`55832`)
 - Fixed bug in :func:`to_numeric` converting to extension dtype for ``string[pyarrow_numpy]`` dtype (:issue:`56179`)
 - Fixed bug in :meth:`DataFrame.__setitem__` casting :class:`Index` with object-dtype to PyArrow backed strings when ``infer_string`` option is set (:issue:`55638`)

pandas/core/arrays/arrow/array.py

@@ -463,7 +463,7 @@ def _box_pa_array(
 
             try:
                 pa_array = pa.array(value, type=pa_type, from_pandas=True)
-            except pa.ArrowInvalid:
+            except (pa.ArrowInvalid, pa.ArrowTypeError):
                 # GH50430: let pyarrow infer type, then cast
                 pa_array = pa.array(value, from_pandas=True)
 

pandas/tests/extension/test_arrow.py

@@ -2959,3 +2959,13 @@ def test_arrow_floordiv():
     expected = pd.Series([-2], dtype="int64[pyarrow]")
     result = a // b
     tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
+
+
+def test_string_to_datetime_parsing_cast():
+    # GH 56266
+    string_dates = ["2020-01-01 04:30:00", "2020-01-02 00:00:00", "2020-01-03 00:00:00"]
+    result = pd.Series(string_dates, dtype="timestamp[ns][pyarrow]")
+    expected = pd.Series(
+        ArrowExtensionArray(pa.array(pd.to_datetime(string_dates), from_pandas=True))
+    )
+    tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)