I hate to think how many Pacific Loons have been overlooked these past, oh, decades. The bird is regular in small numbers throughout the west and midwest every autumn, but the laziness of birders (including me, of course) and the insistence of several generations’ field guides on the exclusively coastal distribution and difficult identification of the species resulted in most twentieth-century birders’ simply “defaulting” to the not-always-so-common Common Loon when a gaviid was spotted inland. The same thing happened last week when a loon showed up in southeast Tucson, but the error was quickly corrected.

Of course, no loon is really expected in habitat like that provided by the hopefully named Lakeside Park.

But as I’ve mentioned before, the grungier the park, the better the birds: what avian wonders would show up here if we started dumping raw sewage? In any event, the Pacific Loon was still present and happily sharing the water with other fishermen when Darlene and I headed over there on Saturday.

The advantage of birding these concrete ponds, of course, here and at other Tucson hotspots like Reid Park, is that the birds can be enjoyed at close, sometimes astonishingly close, range. We had great views of the bird’s “chinstrap,” and several times watched it roll slightly in the water to reveal, immodestly, an alabaster thigh, giving the bird the momentary appearance of an Arctic Loon (a species that almost certainly occurs in Arizona once in a while, donchathink?). And the small size of this urban catchment basin also forced the bird into close quarters with many of the pond’s other denizes: American Coots, American Wigeon, and a spectacular Common Merganser–more expected, but not massively more common than Pacific Loon on most southeast Arizona waters.

At one point the loon threatened to surface too close to the merganser, startling the latter into a panicked skitter that brought it perilously close to the neatly paved “shore.”

My favorite sight, though–perversely, perhaps–was of the loon looking tiny next to a pair of domestic Mallards: proof not so much of the small size of the loon as of the incredible genetic plasticity of ducks!

I love our hummingbird feeders this time of year. Diversity and potential diversity are low among the trochilids–we’re down to just (just!) Costa’s and Anna’s Hummingbirds, with no Broad-billed this year–but what the cast lacks in variety the show itself makes up in comedy. The most frequent sight right now, a constant sight, even, is something like this:

Anyone fortunate enough to have spent a winter in the southwest will recognize that tail and that improbable posture: it’s a Verdin, sucking up the drops from where I must have overfilled the feeder. Once the overflow is gone, they contort themselves even more:

The hummingbirds, of course, are a bit more delicate in their approach to sucking us dry, perching daintily on the feeders the way the box says they’re supposed to.

But the real fun starts when the acrobats and the aerobats decide to visit at the same time.

The Verdin usually wins, even against so hefty an opponent as this male Anna’s: it’s got be a happy and unwonted feeling for this tiny passerine to be able to chase another bird off! And the reward is so sweet.