It’s March, and the birds are a mix of winter and summer. Sweetwater this morning still hosted goodly numbers of Northern Shovelers and Gadwall among the ducks, but Yellow and Lucy’s Warblers joined the Common Yellowthroats and Yellow-rumped Warblers in the leafy willows and cottonwoods. And many of the residents are already busy at the nest.

It’s hard from an aesthetic standpoint not to admire European Starlings, but they were making it much easier by chasing Gila Woodpeckers around the saguaros in an attempt to usurp the picids’ carefully excavated holes. I’m confident that at least some of the woodpeckers will prevail and keep their cool dark homes, but it does them no good at all this time of year to spend so much energy defending them against the invaders. Boo hiss.

Just as beautiful, but native, hurray, were the Brown-headed Cowbirds, males doing their dracula dance as they sang at each other in the bare branches.

Only when a female flew over did they stop displaying to each other and turn their attention to the real matter at hand: “Come here often…?” I’m always happy to see cowbirds, for their glossy good looks, their slightly sinister displays, and their slightly unconventional life histories.

Even more unconventional are the Harris’s Hawks, with their extended-family communal breeding. One bird, probably relieved to be relieved from nest duties for the morning, spent the entire time we were at Sweetwater perched high in a eucalyptus near the nest, watching with apparent lack of interest the goings-on in the ponds below.

 

I’d met Jan and Chuck at a Catalina birdwalk, and we decided that we would do a birding day when their daughter, Julie, came to visit. Today was the day, and we did it up right, with an early start here in Tucson and a delightful finish in cool Madera Canyon.

Our first stop was the Green Valley ponds, where we enjoyed big numbers of Savannah Sparrows and female Brewer’s Blackbirds on the sparse lawns; waterfowl numbers were low, no surprise this time of year, but we tallied a respectable 15 species including the long-lingering (or better, resident) Ross’s Goose. The little white goose wasn’t there when we arrived, and had been reported MIA in the sign-in book, but we watched it fly in with a pair of Mallards and land, my first opportunity to convince myself that this bird can actually fly. Shorebird habitat looks quite promising, with a wide margin of dry and drying mud around the first pond, but no one seems to have mentioned it to the waders, represented only by Killdeer, Least Sandpipers, and a lone dowitcher.

A few minutes at the Continental Maintenance Yard turned up more sparrows, with the dry wooden trills of Brewer’s Sparrow the dominant voice; how I love that little bird! A pair of Vermilion Flycatchers flycaught vermilionically over the pasture.

After seeing the Ross’s, we had to go to Quail Creek/Crossing/Valley/Ridge/Croft/Acres golf course to look for other geese; we found the two Snow Geese and the single adult Greater White-fronted Geese right on the roadside, along with a risibly awkward Double-crested Cormorant standing on the golf course. The American Wigeon flock was down to a couple of dozen birds, making it easy to check them for other wigeons.

Continental School was, as always, a blast; don’t know what I’m going to do if they ever fix that leaky water fountain! Brewer’s Sparrows by the dozens paying no attention to a male American Kestrel, and a Green-tailed Towhee mewling from the brush. Rufous-winged Sparrows were singing and drinking from a pinhole in the irrigation pipe on the south side of the school. The best birds of the day, though, were two Sage Thrashers playing mimid soccer on the field, running and picking like slim streaky robins.

(The photo is from two weeks ago at Red Rock.)

All this and we were nowhere near Madera! So up to Whitehouse and a great picnic lunch, then some even greater birding. We walked a loop along the still torrential creek, then moved the car uphill, then another loop until we were at Madera Kubo. Too many great birds to list, but beauties like Rufous Hummingbird, Arizona Woodpecker, Townsend’s Warbler, and Painted Redstart provided a lifer or two or four for Julie. A Black Phoebe at the Madera Picnic Area was startlingly high, and it was wonderful to hear persistent song from the Bridled Titmice. A lingering Gray-headed Junco at the Santa Rita Lodge flew into the brush when I whispered “Annie Murray” at it.