A Day on the Lower Santa Cruz

I tagged along with Denis, Darlene, and Starr for a day on the Santa Cruz Flats. We had hopes but no ‘targets’, making for a relaxed outing and some great surprises.

The Marana Pecan Grove (which is actually visible in the photos accompanying yesterday’s New York Times article on the Evergreen Air Park!) was relatively quiet, but the roads in were covered with American Pipits, feeding nonchalantly around the car every time we stopped, many of them living up to their alternative moniker “Buff-bellied.” 

Our next stop was a brief one, at Red Rock, where four Ruddy Ground-Doves were huddled up on the ground in the cool morning. Will this be the year that the species is finally confirmed as a breeder there?

And out onto the flats, where we had cripplingly close views of no fewer than 3 Bendire’s Thrashers and a single Sage Thrasher, a hard bird to find around here. Raptor numbers have decreased markedly, but we found a spectacular Prairie Falcon just north of the feedlot, and our day’s tally of Red-tailed Hawks included both dark and intermediate birds, but no Harlan’s. A pair of White-tailed Kites was perched in a favorite tree near Western Sod, raising hopes that they are perhaps at home and thinking of nesting.

We drove around a bit checking sod fields, and eventually spotted a few grayish dots moving in the distance: Mountain Plover. It was a bit of a maze to get closer to them, but we eventually pulled to within several hundred yards of a flock of 34 birds. As we oohed and aahed and watched them through the scope, a few of the birds started to move slowly towards us, and soon half the flock was just a few yards away, daintily feeding in the short grass, small parties occasionally lifting off for short shifting flights and settling again at close range. Magical birds!