City Cormorants

The Mobile Chocolate Laboratory and I spent yesterday’s lunch hour at Reid Park, forgetting that with schools out the place would be swarming. It was, but not just with happy families enjoying their day off; there were birds, too.

The photograph is actually representative of the species mix that will continue at the park–and in most of Tucson’s parks–through the winter, with American Wigeon and American Coots being joined by smaller numbers of Ring-necked Ducks and other divers. (There’s a drake Canvasback at the right of this image, for example.)

Right now, though, it’s the phalacrocoracids that are drawing birders to Reid Park.

Double-crested Cormorant isn’t all that common a bird at most sites in southeast Arizona, and the vastly increasing Neotropic Cormorant is giving its larger cousin a run for the money. This small gang of four Double-crested and two Neotropics is a nice diversion for us here in Tucson, but it pales in comparison to the flocks that can be expected at ponds and puddles in Phoenix, where up to 300 (!) Neotropics and a few Double-crests are being seen this winter.

As I think about it, I’ve seen significantly more Neotropic Cormorants in Arizona city parks than anywhere else north of south Texas–eloquent testimony to the draw of water in the desert.