I sometimes get a cross-eyed look when I describe a bird as a “large sparrow”: is that like a black swan? Well, Aristotle, just as there are Black Swans, so too are there big sparrows and little. Compare, for example, this teenage White-crowned Sparrow with the tiny little Brewer’s Sparrow next to it, both in Catalina State Park last week.

I still remember, and haven’t quite got over yet, my shock at how common Vermilion Flycatchers are in the proper habitat here in southeast Arizona. Any place with a pond and a nice big open area for hunting will do very well, thank you, and both sexes are easy to see as they dance acrobatically through the air.

This fine bit of luminescence was fully in command of the pond at the Sabino Creek IBA yesterday morning, striking terror into the hearts of flighted invertebrates near and far. His mate, though, hung back demurely in the willows, hunting in the shade and hesitating just a moment before slipping onto the nest in front of us, where the lovestruck male brought her hard-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside treats he’d gathered over the pond.

This Important Bird Area has been surveyed long enough and frequently enough that we sometimes think we’ve seen it all. Nearly every time we visit, though, something new comes along, and so it was on this beautiful spring morning.

Our first big surprise was an Osprey, low overhead and then perched.

I am still startled every time I see one of these fishhawks in the desert. At least this one didn’t land on a saguaro, as they often do!

Our raptor tally was a good one even apart from our white-headed guest from the coast. On arriving we found a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched in the same eucalyptus that later harbored the Osprey. The local Cooper’s Hawk pair quacked at us several times in the course of our survey, and at one point they were high in the air displaying at an even higher migrant Cooper’s, which chose the better part of valor and continued north. An American Kestrel floated over, and the last bird of our morning was a fine Red-tailed Hawk. The nocturnal counterpart of all these daylight predators was a Great Horned Owl that we flushed from along the creek; their traditional nest has been tidied up, making us suspect that the Cooper’s Hawks are using it this year.

Migrant passerines were not abundant, with just a few White-crowned Sparrows and Green-tailed Towhees around. We did have a single Virginia’s Warbler, and the picnic area mesquites were an obviously happy hunting ground for a Painted Redstart, always a treat to see at low elevation.

I learned once again that conspicuous and tame does not necessarily translate into easy to photograph, though I’m very proud of one of my accidental shots of the bird in flight.

Artistic, I guess you could call it.