Archive for Arizona
Arizona: Boyce Thompson Arboretum
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With the move to New Jersey just days away now, Alison and I have been seizing every scarce opportunity to get away from the packing and enjoy monsoon here in Arizona. We were delighted to be asked to lead a “sit” at Boyce Thompson Arboretum this past weekend–especially since a Tufted Flycatcher had appeared there last week.
No cute little orange tyrannids for us, but our Friday evening stroll was a delight. Visiting firemen like us are assigned a neat little apartment on the grounds the night before a tour, giving us the whole beautiful park to ourselves from closing time Friday to meeting time Saturday.
Alison and Gellert and I wandered around in the cooling evening, pausing to watch Lucy’s and Yellow Warblers and Hooded Orioles at the water features and admiring the beautiful plants, native and not.
Moving from shady spot to shady spot, we were serenaded by the hoots and hollers of Yellow-breasted Chats and the whooping whistles of Phainopeplas. A silent Yellow-billed Cuckoo was a nice sight, the first of the species either of us had seen this year. Big shadows alerted us to the arrival of three Common Ravens, which had somehow surprised an adult Zone-tailed Hawk and were chasing the poor bird low over the trees, nearly striking it a few times.
The next morning dawned bright and warm, and we were very happy to get to spend a few minutes chatting with Carl. A Varied Bunting was jangling from the wash, and Inca Doves rattled away from us as we crossed the parking lot to meet up with the assembled group.
The birding was good and the company great for the next two and a half hours. We made our way slowly to the hummingbird garden, where Broad-billed Hummingbirds were firmly in command of the feeders, tails atremble every time they landed to suck down the sugarwater. Yellow-breasted Chats, constantly audible as usual, gave us the first of many good views we would enjoy of that sometimes elusive hyper-warbler, and families of Phainopeplas, the young still goofy-gaped, fluttered and flopped through the hackberries.
After a while we moved on to the Woodland Garden, where the tiny waterfall was gushing and birds were moving through at a steady but not an overwhelming pace. One of the great things about a sit is the chance to talk to everyone individually–none of this jockeying for position close to the front of the line–and to answer (and ask!) questions and help out with identifications. We had plenty of opportunity to talk about geographic variation in Yellow Warbler, with gray juveniles following their pale, lightly marked parents in to drink. Hooded Orioles played around in the eucalyptus branches above us, and Abert’s Towhees scratched and screeched from the dense vegetation. My favorite sighting of the day was certainly the male Summer Tanager that perched for all to see through the scope; it’s hard to think of anything more beautifully tropical!
Soon enough it was 9:00, and as the day warmed up and the birds dispersed, so did we–some of us to continue exploring the park and some of us, like Alison and me, to get on with a day filled with other tasks, tasks made easier by a fine morning of birding behind us.
The Peripatetic Feeder
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It was a great afternoon for a little feeder watching here in Tucson, a monsoon thunderstorm building and birds coming in for a last gobble before the rain.
Naturally, the feeders will be among the very last things we pack–just as they were when we moved most of them here from New Jersey eight years ago. A couple are Tucson purchases, a couple from Alison’s stays in Georgia and New York, but for the most part, our tubes and cages and bowls and basins came with us from the Garden State, some of them, if I remember right, even from Rosedale Mills before it left Princeton. Now that dates me.
As I sat and watched the Lesser Goldfinches and White-winged Doves and Costa’s Hummingbirds, it occurred to me that these feeders have a pretty interesting “life list.” How many others have served to nourish Tufted Titmice and Verdins, Red-bellied and Gila Woodpeckers, Cactus and Carolina Wrens?
Not many, I’d guess.
Arizona: Chickadee Substitutes
Posted by: | CommentsI’d never lived anyplace without parids. I grew up in southeast Nebraska with Black-capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmouses, then wound up confronted with the chickadee quagmire that is central New Jersey. When we moved to Tucson eight years ago, it was a shock to have no parids at all in the yard. Several species live in sight of our place, of course: Mountain Chickadees and Bridled Titmouses in the Santa Catalinas, Juniper Titmouses in the Rincons; but down here in the desert, nothing.
Well, there is one thing.
Thank goodness for Verdins, fluffy mesquite dwellers whose size and confiding nature make them the perfect chickadee substitute. There was a time, if I remember right, when this species was included in an expanded family Paridae along with the chickadees, but nowadays it and the other penduline tits occupy their own Remizidae, of which our desert bird is the only American representative.
Verdins are permanent residents on apparently a very small scale: my sense is that we have the same individuals in our yard all year round, their loyalty assured by a steady supply of sugar water in the feeders they so acrobatically raid.
It helps, too, that our yard is “forested” with mesquites and palo verdes. Verdins love to build their nests out towards the tips of the branches of these desert trees.
When we moved here, I was convinced that we had forty or fifty Verdins in the neighborhood–some of the trees looked like they’d been taken over by tiny, architecturally challenged oropendolas. But as everybody else already knew, Verdins are big builders, with each pair constructing multiple nests in their territory.
Most of the nests–up to 11 in a year, says BNA!–are roosting nests, each bird building its own; the larger, more substantial nests for the eggs and chicks are built cooperatively by the breeding pair. One of the most charming sights of the desert spring is that of all the male Verdins flying around with feathers in their bills, which they bring to the females for the nest lining.
It’ll be nice to be back in chickadeeland, and nice, too, that we’ll be far enough north in New Jersey to more or less know which bibbed species we’re looking at on a given day. But I’ m afraid for quite a while I’ll be thinking of our yard chickadees as nothing more than Verdin substitutes.
Arizona: Cotton Rat
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The reliable clan of Harris’s Hawks gets all the attention at Tucson’s Sweetwater Wetlands, but sometimes we forget why they’re there–and why they’re so happy.
Native cotton rats are abundant in wet habitats in southeast Arizona, and it’s not uncommon to see them scurrying around the rushes and cattails. This one yesterday morning was taking it much easier, enjoying the shade even while keeping an eye out for the hawks.
Arizona: Lucy’s Warbler
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The trim little Lucy’s Warbler is one of the most abundant birds of the Sonoran desert, its bright, cheerful, somewhat rambling song a characteristic sound of mesquite bosques and riparian woodlands from mid-March to the highest, hottest days of summer.
Right about now is when the young fledge, and suddenly there are three or four times as many individuals around, their high-pitched begging calls constantly heard all day long. Mary and I spent considerable time watching them as they came to the water ‘features’ at Boyce Thompson earlier this week, admiring the dove-gray elegance of the adults and appreciating the opportunity to get to see the young in a little-known and briefly held plumage.
Few birders know that this species, traditionally characterized as among the warblers without wingbars, has great big whitish tips to the greater and median coverts in the first few weeks of life. The photo above shows a classically plain-winged adult with a newly fledged kid, two of a good 30 or so Lucy’s Warblers taking advantage of the pools to bathe and drink.
