Waders in the desert: a contradiction in terms?

Not in the least. I’ve been lucky to live in some of the best shorebirding areas in the world, and every year about this time I’m reminded of how wonderful it is to watch shorebirds in Arizona. The diversity doesn’t match a July salt marsh in New Jersey, the numbers don’t rise to a May morning in Nebraska’s rainwater basin, but the excitement of seeing birds up close and well, concentrated at small lakes and isolated wetlands, just can’t be beat.

Fourteen early-rising shorebirders joined me this morning–last night, really, with the stars ashine and Western Screech-Owls ascreech when I left the house at 4:00. We assembled in the dark in southeast Tucson, made the obligatory sunrise golden arches stop at Benson, and arrived to an already hot, bright Willcox playa. And to birds, lots of birds.

We started off, following hoary tradition, with a detour down the east side of the golf course, where a junk-filled front yard almost unfailingly produces Scaled Quail. A family of Gambel’s Quail out on the green was a bonus, and a couple of pairs of Scaled Quail performed equally well, bobbing along like the fine little chickens they are, occasionally mounting a higher perch to watch us watching them.

The quail were disappointingly silent; pretty as they are to look at, I almost prefer listening to their homely “chu-kar, chu-kar” songs. Happily, we didnt’ do without a soundtrack entirely: Cassin’s Sparrows and Lilian’s Meadowlarks were almost continuously audible, rich whistles from the meadowlarks with a sweet buzzy descant from the sparrows. Summer in the desert!

We’d seen 19 Killdeer on the golf course while we were quail-watching, but the real shorebird show, of course, was on Lake Cochise itself. A blur of spinning white birds just off the muddy shore was a gang of many score Wilson’s Phalaropes. There were just a few juveniles in the group, nearly all basic-plumaged adults. Towering among them were Black-necked Stilts and dozens of American Avocets, adults and juveniles alike.

Some of the avocets may have been locally produced, but numbers like this certainly reflect the arrival of birds from the north. That’s even truer of the two Marbled Godwits that came in and of the 50+ Long-billed Curlews that settled on the edge of the lake.

This was one of the biggest curlew flocks I’d ever seen at Willcox. I find the species difficult to age, but most of the birds I looked at closely were showing breaks and abrasions in the primaries, so probably adults.

Big shorebirds are wonderful and distracting, but they can’t hold a candle to the little calids. I’d chosen the date for this tour in the almost certain hope that we’d see a few Baird’s Sandpipers among the Leasts and Westerns. Surprise!

Today’s common Calidris was Baird’s Sandpiper, a good 80 adults scattered all around the lake, their low rumbling growls constantly audible as they flew past on those long wings. They actually outnumbered Least Sandpipers, the species I’d been counting on to provide easy examples as we discussed sandpiper identification. And Western Sandpiper? I’m not certain that everybody in the group even got to see one; there were only about four adults around, and it’s hard to get everyone on a tiny little actively feeding bird that looks, superficially at least, like everything else on the mudflat. But those Baird’s–wonderful, beautiful birds from the Arctic, on their way farther south than I’ve ever flown–were definitely the highlight of the day, and I think everyone knows how to identify them now with one binocular barrel covered.

Sad to go through life saddled with such a name, but the Pyrrhuloxias of our yard seem cheerful enough all the same.

These “gray cardinals” are a common sight in the neighborhood, slipping among the cactus and palo verdes to feed out of sight. But early in the morning and again in the evening, the males are moved to seek higher perches, from which they sing their loud, somewhat thin series of whistles, enlivening the otherwise silent heat of our desert midsummer.

The yard is alive in the early mornings this time of year. Refreshed and hungry after a cool night, small birds and mammals and reptiles scurry all over before the sun gets too hot–attracting the occasional large predator like this juvenile Harris’s Hawk.

Harris’s is a true desert bird, breeding and hunting in saguaro forests. It’s also a very tolerant bird, undisturbed by humans and their noisy activities (undisturbed even, we’ve found, by the rambunctiousness of a big Labrador puppy). They nest throughout Tucson, wherever there are tall saguaros and eucalyptuses, and it’s a rare day when one or two don’t drift over our yard on the way to their aerie across the road. It looks like the local breeding group has had good success this year, with the awful screams of juveniles echoing through the neighborhood.