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All in a Day’s Work

Everybody’s interested in birds, even if they might not call themselves a birder.

Today started out with a question from a dear friend and former colleague at Princeton University’s Index of Christian Art: just what, she wanted to know, is “bird liming” exactly? (If you don’t know, you probably don’t want to know.)

And on returning from lunch I found an e-mail from the Antiques Roadshow asking for the identification of a bird painted by a famous American bird artist. You’ll have to watch the show to find out yourself, but I was able to pass on the bird’s identity–and, with a little e-sniffing around, the year the painting was likely produced.

An Amazon Kingfisher suns in Guyana, closely approximating the posture of a limed bird.
An Amazon Kingfisher suns in Guyana, closely approximating the posture of a limed bird.

It’s not quite what I had in mind when I started the “Birds and Art” tours here at WINGS (Provence this year, Tuscany and Provence in 2010, Provence and Portugal in 2011…), but it’s terrific fun!

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Grasshopper Sparrow

Marion and I spent this gloriously summer-like St. David’s Day along the lower Santa Cruz. It’s not winter down there any more, and the great raptor shows of the cold season are done with; but we still tallied a fine adult Peregrine Falcon, several Harris’s Hawks, four Northern Harriers (including two dazzling silver males), and small numbers of scattered American Kestrels and Red-tailed Hawks. We also saw three owl species, beginning with a saguaro-roosting Western Screech-Owl; the “secret” site in Marana turned up no fewer than six Burrowing Owls, and farther north we discovered a pair of Great Horned Owls at a big stick nest–while the obviously dispossessed Common Ravens were working on a new effort of their own on the other side of the tamarisk!

Sparrows were as scarce as raptors, it seemed, but we had a fine surprise in Marana. We were watching Vesper and Savannah Sparrows along a weedy fenceline when suddenly a little buffy blur blew in and perched–a Grasshopper Sparrow, I think the first I’d ever seen in Pima County.

The bird was remarkably obliging, giving us lengthy views of the sort usually to be counted on only from singing individuals.

And cute as a button, too, especially head on.

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