Kentucky Warbler West

Darlene, Starr, and I decided to check out Las Cienegas this morning, a beautiful tract of working ranch, mesquite bosque, and riparian gallery just north of Sonoita. We’d heard about a fire there recently, but were surprised on arriving to find just how extensive it had been: the entire north side of the entrance road was charred, mesquites dead, sparrows nowhere in evidence. But already there were green shoots coming up, boding well for the “second spring” of monsoon season, and a White-tailed Kite, always a pleasant surprise in the summer, was finding the newly open terrain promising as a hunting ground.

Though it was already warming up on the grasslands, the air along cottonwood-clad Empire Gulch was cool and sweet, and the weird hoots and cackles of Yellow-breasted Chats surrounded us. More of a surprise was a fine Rufous-crowned Sparrow singing in the parking area, far from any rocky hillsides; not to be too indelicate, but the prominence of his CP suggested that he was doing just fine, thank you, in this slightly unusual habitat.

Darlene has a field trip scheduled for Las Cienegas in a couple of weeks, and one of her targets for the group is Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Our breeding subspecies is badly in decline (habitat loss, what a surprise), but this site harbors a good population, and we had a great time just standing in the parking lot watching individuals pass through in their search for hairy caterpillars; a couple sang, but most perched silent and attentive in the willows, waiting for movement. Less finely attuned to invertebrates than the cuckoos, we saw mostly birds: Ash-throated and Brown-crested Flycatchers, Bell’s Vireos, Phainopeplas, Yellow Warblers, Common Yellowthroats, Summer Tanagers, Lark Sparrows, Blue Grosbeaks, Varied Buntings… no real need to walk more than a foot or two from the car! The oddest sight was a pair of Northern Bobwhite scooting down to get a drink from the creek; extirpated for a century, these were certainly recent releases, particularly as they were not of the local “Masked” subspecies.

Not far upstream, we were amazed to hear the chant of an Oporornis warbler, and soon a fine male Kentucky Warbler appeared to bask in our amazed admiration.

This little guy was state bird for all three of us, and just about the last thing we expected to see on a June morning in the Arizona desert!