The Easter Parade

Do you remember the “mystery lists” that used to appear in Winging It lo-these-many ago? The challenge was to determine the locality, but the game was pretty boring pretty quick once you figured out to check the chickadee first, then look for an outstanding rarity.

The absence of chickadees in this Easter morning photo is a clue in itself, and of course the Abert’s Towhee gives it away: there aren’t many places in the world where that bird occurs at all, and even fewer where it can be found scarfing up millet from a suburban sidewalk. As I watched the seed pile this morning, most of the desert granivores stopped in, including a desert cottontail fresh, I assume, from his egg deliveries.