Arizona Northern Jacana

Alison had to catch a plane from Phoenix this noon, so Darlene and Michael joined me for the drive up and a little bit of birding after we dropped Alison off at Sky Harbor.

It was cold even at noon, and windy enough at Gilbert Water Ranch that even the Abert’s Towhees and White-crowned Sparrows were huddled under the brush. The Water Ranch is one of my favorite birding spots (how galling for an adoptive Tucsonan to say that about a place in Phoenix!), but it didn’t quite live up to expectations today. We had no luck in finding any of the wintering rarities, and even the Peach-faced Lovebirds tried our patience, at first simply flashing through the sky above us, then finally landing where we got good views of perched birds.

Ducks were few, the vast majority of them Northern Pintails and Green-winged Teal. It’s always a joy to see pintail up close, and the light was such that several times I had to remind myself that the green on the head and wing of the teal was feathers and not some sort of organically generated neon glowing against the water. The wind also kept raptor activity down; a couple of Northern Harriers let themselves be blown around the ponds, and a dashing juvenile Peregrine Falcon raced through past a female American Kestrel trying to keep her perch in the breeze.

Dusk falls early this time of year, so it was south to Casa Grande. The golf course greens near the ponds were covered with American Wigeon and American Coots, with a juvenile Snow Goose as a nod to seasonal appropriateness. A Red-shafted Flicker burst out of the salt cedars, where Audubon’s Warblers and Ruby-crowned Kinglets fussed and chittered. But our target bird was nowhere to be seen.

The next pond had even more waterfowl, including plenty of Bufflehead and a few Lesser Scaup. And there on the shore, moving carefully among the coots, the adult Northern Jacana. (Photos to follow.) While we were enjoying the bird, a lifer for Michael, a New Jersey birder pulled up, fresh from the airport, so we got to watch the bird with him for a while, too.

The drive home to Tucson was occupied with thoughts of why this bird isn’t drawing more traffic from all across North America. Jacanas are extremely rare in the ABA Area nowadays, and even back in the days when they bred in Texas, they weren’t that easy to find. Could it be that the cooperative Texas birds a couple of years ago sated the market, and that “everyone” has already seen the species? Or is it that jacanas are so common and readily viewed in Central America that birders don’t bother traveling within the US for “just a jacana”? As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the birds of the year in southeast Arizona, one that I’m planning on visiting again myself, more than once.