Verde Valley Birding Festival: Day IV

I’d slipped out to Tavasci Marsh Friday afternoon for a few minutes, so was really looking forward to this morning’s formal field trip. I wasn’t alone in my excitement, and Rob, the fine leader for this excursion, had his hands full with a couple of dozen eager birders.

The place is simply dazzling, a cattail marsh in a tight little valley surmounted by the ruins of Tuzigoot, one of the most beautiful Native American sites I’ve ever seen. It is particularly impressive in the low-angled light of early morning, when shadows create volume and depth and the silence of the desert helps the imagination hear the voices of the long-dead. This is a place to visit often, in respect, and alone.

Oblivious to the weight of the centuries, though, the marsh birds go about their business in full voice and sometimes in full view. Yellow-breasted Chats contribute most of the audible song, and we actually saw ridiculous numbers of these amazing birds, including one singing bird whose breast and throat were decidedly towards the orange end of yellow. Song Sparrows, pale and sparsely marked fallax (or fallax/montana intergrades), were equally conspicuous out in the dense cattails. Soras and Virginia Rails whinnied and grunted, but unfortunately never left their Typha fastnesses to give us good looks.

The gigantic cottonwoods offer nest sites for raptors, and at one point the neighborhood seemed a bit cramped for the Red-tailed and Cooper’s Hawks occupying adjacent territories. One of the Cooper’s Hawks was so unfortunate as to be discovered by a Western Kingbird, which chased the poor birdhawk long and hard before either losing interest or rediscovering its instinct for self-preservation. The Cooper’s Hawk, no doubt smarting from the injury to his pride, decided that the best way to restore avian self-esteem was to find somebody to pick on himself, and at that moment one of the neighboring Red-tails rather unwisely took flight, only to find itself beset by an accipiter in a decidedly bad mood; the Cooper’s struck the larger bird several times as victim and aggressor alike rolled through the sky, each trying to gain altitude above the other. The Red-tail finally managed to get above the Cooper’s, and the sight of those dangling talons discouraged the smaller bird from further attack. A great show, and a great way to end the last field trip of the festival!