Archive for January, 2010
Northerners
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s no place like southeast Arizona (piae memoriae) for roadside raptors, but our drive across southern British Columbia yesterday made me pine the less.
We stopped in Osoyoos to meet up with David and Valerie, then headed north along the lake to look for the recent Yellow-billed Loon. We found a single Common Loon among the waterbirds scattered up and down the lake, but nothing large, pale, or light-billed. As we turned to leave our last vantage point, a sharp, dark shape flashed into a tree above our heads: a female Merlin. Another flew past Alison’s parents’ living room here in Nelson this afternoon, making that most dashing of small raptors an everyday bird–it really will be every day this summer, when a pair nests, as they do most years, in the neighbors’ pine.
Merlins are nice, but even nicer was the chunky brown bird on the wire on our way back out to the highway.
I’m lucky to see a single Northern Shrike in a year–usually on a spring visit to Nebraska–but I think that 2010 may just be an exception. As we watched this first-cycle bird, it dropped from its high perch to haze the birds on the ground beneath, then dived into a tangle after some tiny passerine that had sought shelter there. No luck, and as we drove off, the shrike was back on the wire, hopeful still.
A couple of miles farther on, another wire, another shape.
Northern Pygmy-Owls are common enough in the forests across southern British Columbia, and a day’s drive anywhere usually produces one or two. This one gawked at us for a moment, then twisted to resume his rodent lookout over the snowy roadside.
Snow on the Mountains
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The view from our front yard in Tucson, after a serious series of winter storms. It’s great to sit out in shirt sleeves to admire the snow from a distance, a luxury I’ m less likely to be able to indulge in once we’re both in Vancouver–two days and counting fast.
Bronzed Cowbird
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Bronzed Cowbirds are scarce in southeast Arizona in the dead of winter, but there are always a few here and there at such favored sites as the Benson sewage ponds or the University of Arizona farms here in Tucson. The icterid flock at Lakeside Park had at least three individuals on Saturday, huddled in the trees or patrolling the chilly lawns with the abundant Brewer’s and Red-winged Blackbirds, Great-tailed Grackles, and Brown-headed Cowbirds.
- As usual, just click for a larger version of the image.
All of the Lakeside birds were brown, but as Darlene pointed out, the extravagant ruffs–especially well visible in the original quiz image–suggested that they were first-winter males rather than females. My library is divided right now between Vancouver and Tucson, so I haven’t been able to check into the plumage sequences of this species; it’ll be nice to reunite the books someday!
A Quiz Bird
Posted by: | CommentsSeen yesterday in Tucson, in the loose company of Common Goldeneye, Western Bluebird, and Cassin’s Finch.
Like most quizzes, it’s easy once you know what it is.
It’s All Local
Posted by: | CommentsA delightful day yesterday at Whitewater Draw with 25 engaging clients from Green Valley–thanks to Darlene and PJ for putting it together and letting me come along!
Sandhill Cranes at Whitewater last week
Officially, we were there to look at the tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes that fly in every morning to loaf between breakfast and supper, and the sight was a grand one as always. The keener birders in the group–and there were quite a few–while more than appreciative of the spectacle offered by the cranes, kept sharp eyes peeled for the many other wonders to be encountered here. Everything from Sora to Great Horned Owl to Vermilion Flycatcher to Lark Bunting showed up to be admired.
Alongside the many expected species, we ran into two good rarities. A Swamp Sparrow haunted the cattails and bulrushes at the northern edge of the interior pond; this dark eastern beauty is a regular low-density winterer in southeast Arizona, but hardly a bird you can count on seeing.
Definitely the highlight of the day–until, that is, we reached the southern edge of the same pond. One last scan of the waterfowl (we had fourteen species for the day) produced a fine drake Greater Scaup, a bird whose presence had been rumored for weeks and one I’d managed to miss, over and over, on every one of my visits this winter. But there he was, preening in the company of a couple of Lesser Scaup, at times floating into the same scope field with his affinis cousins to produce very satisfying life-looks for those interested.
An exciting day–even though I can think of a hundred, a thousand, locations where neither the sparrow nor the scaup–nor the combination of the two–would so much as raise an eyebrow on a January afternoon. But that’s just the beauty of birding: experiences and events that might otherwise be hundrum-hohum, barely worth the mention, make a day a red-letter one when they’re situated in our own peculiar landscapes, topographic or mental. It’s up to us, to our knowledge and our expectations, to turn a sighting into an encounter, a bird into the bird.
