Desert Summer
ByHot today, and when I arrived at Catalina State Park at 7:30, the high ridge trails were already quiet. But quiet doesn’t mean lifeless, and my three and a half hours were full of glimpses into the intimate life of the birds of the desert summer.
Costa’s Hummingbird can be hard to find this time of year, with most adult males apparently already off on summer vacation. My total of 5 was low compared to winter counts of the species, but it did include one female on a nest; she spent more than half of the 30 minutes or so I watched her cooling the eggs, the rest of the time out gathering bits of down and spiderweb to add to the rim of the nest. A female Broad-billed Hummingbird was haunting the same thick ash, but her nest was obviously better concealed.
Summer is a colorful time in the desert, and Summer Tanagers and Blue Grosbeaks have moved back in in force. Of the half a dozen tanagers I ran across, not one was a fully red male; instead, females and splotchy orange first-years were chasing each other around the washes, singing and spit-chucking above my head.
No less striking than the bright passerines was a male American Kestrel, brought forth from his saguaro fastness to harrass a Red-tailed Hawk that had dared trespass too close to the nest. The buteo sat his ground for ten minutes, while the little falcon swooped again and again at the larger bird, calling at the top of each extravagant loop. While the kestrel was busy with his own problems, an adult Great Horned Owl roosting in front of a hole in the bank drew the attention of a nice mob of passerines: Verdins, Canyon and Abert’s Towhees, Pyrrhuloxia and Northern Cardinal, a Bewick’s Wren (that’s the one I’d have been worried about!), and the only obvious migrants of the morning, a Western Flycatcher (presumably a Pacific-slope, but who can say?) and a lovley male MacGillivray’s Warbler.
Forty-five species, first of June, 103 degrees: not bad!
