Olive Tree Birding

To Boyce Thompson Arboretum, near Superior, to look for the Rufous-backed Robin. The robin eluded us, wretched creature, but the time we spent standing quietly under the tree it’s been feeding in was well worth it.

Olives are widely planted as ornamentals here in southeast Arizona, but I never think of looking for birds in them: afraid, I suppose, I’ll get hit by one of those black marbles they call fruit! As the season wears on, though, it seems that the birds discover and appreciate them, and the robin has been reported often in the last few days from a large specimen on the arboretum’s main path. In the tree this morning were many House Finches, Gila Woodpeckers, Curve-billed Thrashers, and Northern Mockingbirds. While we watched, they were joined by a Scott’s Oriole and a Crissal Thrasher, the former an arrival, the latter an uncommon skulker there along Queen Creek.

The ground was littered with olive fruits knocked down by the recent snow, and I was amazed to see them being picked carefully apart by sparrows, including Green-tailed Towhee, White-crowned Sparrow, and Lincoln’s Sparrow. True “globalization,” this: American emberizids happily gobbling the fruits of a Mediterranean tree!  I may have to start an olive tree list….