Peña Blanca Monsoon

Today was scouting day for my Southwest Wings field trip to California Gulch–but Lori and I didn’t make it nearly that far. Early, early we drove south past mountains wrapped in thick monsoon skies, over moraines of rain-driven gravel and cobbles, and around tangles of flotsam left on the roads by last night’s storm.

And then, just a few hundred yards in on Ruby Road, we encountered this.

It may not look like a lot of water, but it was moving fast and hard, and probably carrying more than enough sediment to wash even the squattest of Subarus off the sharp edge of the road and downstream.

I hemmed, I hawed, I chickened out.

After a few minutes of admiring the torrent, we turned around and drove back to Peña Blanca Lake, where the water was flowing just as furious. But the parking lot was still accessible, and a narrow, instable spit of land still protruded into the west end of the lake where the boat ramp once was. We walked out, and walked into a feeding frenzy.

Dragonflies big and small were skimming the waters where they calmed, and they were hunted in turn by a good dozen Cassin’s Kingbirds and half that many Brown-crested Flycatchers, noisy even over the roar of the flowing wash. A couple of Vermilion Flycatchers and a family of Black Phoebes, the kids still sporting their bright brown wingbars and yellow gap flanges, sought smaller prey, while a Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet seemed to spend almost as much time singing as it did picking through the leaves. Summer  Tanagers, Yellow Warblers, and Northern Cardinals added color to the scene, and drama was provided by two Black Vultures that took off from their clifftop roost above us. A juvenile Gray Hawk screamed and squawked, but its stunning parent was obviously “weaning” it, flying in with prey in its feet to land close to the still keening, still hungry juvenile, then taking off without sharing whatever unfortunate frog or lizard had crossed its path.

Just as we were thinking about leaving this lively scene, we cast another glance at the two Spotted Sandpipers that had been bobbing on the flotsam–and this time we picked up another movement in the water. It was the pair of Least Grebes that Cliff had discovered last week, and for a good quarter of an hour they plied the muddy waters in front of us, diving frequently and staying under long.

Common and familiar in Mexico and Central America, and easy enough to find along the lower Rio Grande, this is a very rare bird in Arizona, and with the apparent demise of the long-faithful individuals that frequented two Tucson sites, these are the only Least Grebes known in the entire US outside of Texas.

Since their discovery last week, these two are reported to have built a nest, copulated, and laid eggs in front of the ornithovoyeurs. We couldn’t see the nest this morning; it may well have fallen victim to the same storm that kept us out of California Gulch. But the pair did stick close together, in obvious conjugal fondness, and once we heard them sing, a loud trilled duet like silver under the monsoon skies.