Blackbirds and a White-winged Dove

A chilly, windy day, but I couldn’t resist a lunchtime visit to Fort Lowell, a site so important to the history of North American ornithology–and, because it’s reachable by SunTran bus, one no less significant to my history as a Tucson birder. I’d hoped to come across the Wood Duck reported there this weekend, but the little pond was the exclusive province of 50 or so American Wigeon, Ring-necked Ducks, and a ragbag of domestic and wild-type Mallards doing their immodest best to ensure the survival of the species.

So I went for a walk instead. Anna’s Hummingbirds are at it, too, with their scritchy songs audible even over the brisk wind. Mourning Doves and Rock Pigeons were sunning in the shelter of hundred-year-old adobe walls, with them a couple of White-winged Doves; that latter species is rare in Tucson in winter, though it lingers in small numbers to our south even through the coldest weather–we’d had a singing bird in the Dragoons over the weekend. I can’t wait ’til the so-sad singers return to our yard in a couple of months.

The white-wings were a reminder that today’s chill notwithstanding, our winter will soon be over, and with it will go some of the common cold-season birds I take too much for granted. So I spent some time with the small flock of icterids; there were a few Great-tailed Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds, but most were Brewer’s Blackbirds, a species I’ve always been irrationally fond of. It’s strange how some birds capture the imagination early on and never let it go. Brewer’s is a common bird, widespread, easily identified, an undistinguished singer, addicted to such unappealing habitats as dumpsters and feedlots. But I’ve loved it before I even saw my first one, 30-some years ago, and I never tire of watching them patrol the pecan grove and parking lots of Fort Lowell, striding delicately among the European Starlings and chunkier, clunkier blackbirds they consort with.