Coyote, the Roadrunner’s After You!

We had heavy rain last night, followed by cooler temperatures, so what’s a birder to do but head to the sewage beds? It was plenty hot by the time I finished walking the ponds at Avra Valley, but still an improvement over last time.

The juvenile Brown Pelican is still floating morosely around on the north pond, joined this morning, though, by five adult and a single juvenile Wilson’s Phalarope. The west pond was again the most productive (and, of course, the longest walk through the heat); the numbers of Blue Grosbeaks and Lark Sparrows feeding in the grass have to be seen to be believed, and among the rather few shorebirds was a Solitary Sandpiper adult, first of the fall for me of this rather uncommonish species in southeast Arizona.

Most enjoyable, though, was a little family of Greater Roadrunners, two adults in casual attendance on a juvenile (aged by the short bill and the bright, fresh coat of feathers covering his still noticeably slender body). The parents, with a wisdom born of age, kept out of my way, but their youngster was not just unafraid but inquisitive, several times approaching me so close that I stepped back, wary of what even that kid-sized bill would feel like when applied to sandal-clad toes. This bird really has some growing up to do: it even followed, at safe distance, a coyote that ran across the dike in front of us!