My World: Birds Small and Large

Plumbeous Vireo 1-14-09 by Kathie Brown

My World is a world of birds and birding. In quest of Big January I have gone birding almost every day this month. Last Wednesday I decided to visit Sweetwater Wetlands where I hoped to pickup some new species of birds. Sweetwater is undergoing some maintenance right now, so the main parking lot and front ponds are closed, but the County has set up temporary parking down the street with an alternative access to the back ponds. Most people come to Sweetwater to see ducks and the resident family of Harris Hawks, but many smaller species live in the cattails, rushes and willows. When I arrived the heavy machinery was right near the road and I had to walk past it to access the trails. I wondered how there could be any bird here, but I was pleasantly surprised. The ponds are full of hundreds of Northern Shovlers as well as Wigeons, Mallards, Ruddy Ducks and Coots. Around the edges of the ponds today a display is set up with a group of school children learning about the wetlands and how they work. I walk the perimeter quietly and wait for the silence to come. Soon the school children leave and most of the early birders. I am almost alone here now and the birds emerge from their hiding places to feed in safety once again.

It is now that I find this Plumbeous Vireo flitting about in the branches of a willow. While photos of ducks are much easier to capture, finding and getting close to these smaller birds is the real challenge. Vireos are very active insect eating birds closely related to shrikes. Their thick bills are hooked at the ends and this Plumbeous Vireo has white "spectacles" and wing bars.

I was delighted to catch this small song bird in the act of feeding. I watched from below as it captured...

...and gobbled up an insect. It ripped the legs off to swallow first...




..then repositioned the bug...

...and gobbled it up!

Like any well mannered bird, it cleaned its beak on a limb...

...before continuing the hunt once again. You can see the white spectacles and double wingbars in this photo as well as the hooked beak.

And while I am watching the Plumbeous vireo, this little yellow-rumped warbler is watching me. Yellow-rumped warblers come in two varieties: Audubon's with the yellow throat, and the more eastern Myrtle with a white throat. Once considered separate species,the two were combined into one currently called Yellow-rumped for the bright yellow rump they both sport. Many birders call them "butter butts" which is an easy distinguishing field mark.

Most of the ducks are napping at this time of day with their beaks tucked into their downy feathers. A few float serenely on the pond, but they keep their distance. However, when this female Ruddy Duck came close, I couldn't resist snapping her photo. Ruddy ducks are small diving ducks and the males are quite colorful and clownish looking when they are in breeding plumage.

Here is what winter looks like in Arizona. It is 71 degrees today and I am in a T-shirt and Capri's. The warm sun beats down on me, and I am thankful for the shady paths in Sweetwater Wetlands.

Apparently this Ruby-crowned Kinglet likes them as well as it creeps along a willow twig looking for lunch. To me it looks like a birdy bouncing ball along a willow musical staff with green-leafed notes hanging down in some woodsy song. Do you know the melody perhaps?

I have seen the resident family of Harris Hawks hunting over my head since I arrived. One has finally landed close enough for me to get a shot with my Nikon D80 and 300mm lens. I zoom in as it looks over its red shoulder with the sun glinting in its dark eye.

These tall eucalyptus trees along the Roger Road Waste Treatment Plant are their favorite lookouts. The family of five nests in one of them. Harris Hawks are unique in that they hunt cooperatively as a family. I have seen at least 3 of them today with one carrying a twisted stick into the tree to replenish the nest.

But this one has had enough of me photographing it and takes off. This photo shows the best field marks with the dark body, red shoulders, white base to the tail and the white terminal band. You can also see the formidable talons used to capture prey. I saw 33 species of birds at Sweetwater and added 7 new species to my Big January Count. I thought I was done for the day, but then I decided to stop at Lakeside Park.

Lakeside Park is located off Golf Links Road on 8299 East Stella Road between Kolb and Sarnoff. It is a lovely small park with picnic areas, ball fields and a man made lake. While ducks, grackles and blackbirds frequent this body of water, I know it is also a reliable place to see Spotted Sandpipers.

And sure enough I find on in winter plumage on the far shore. I have to hike all the way around to get close enough for a picture, but it is well worth it. There are always fishermen here trying their luck in the well stocked pond. But as I walk the edge of the lake counting mallards and wigeons I round the curve of the shoreline to discover a fisherman I never expected to find here.

This large bird silhouetted on the rusting sign warning people not to swim is unmistakeably a Brown Pelican! But what is it doing here?

I snap a few shots, then walk farther down the shore to get the bird in better light. The bird doesn't seem to care at all as it sits atop its chosen perch and preens away in the sunlight.

I finally sit myself down on the curbing and snap to my heart's content. The sight of this bird is a gift in more ways than one. I smile at its comical appearance and enjoy this special moment. I wonder if anyone else knows about this bird and when I am home once again I find it has already been reported on the Southeast Arizona Rare Bird Alert.

I am birding at breakneck speed and spend the weekend couting birds. Now, on Monday morning it was 59 degrees at 6:00 a.m. In the past 50 minutes it has dropped to 56, but as soon as the sun rises the temperature will soar rapidly and by this afternoon it will be in the mid 70's once again in My World. I am going back to Madera Canyon today to meet a fellow blogger named Kathy from Kentucky. Perhaps we will spot that Black-throated Green Warbler again today and one of us will capture its picture! Her blog is Life, Birding, Photos and Everything and she and her husband are out here for the Wings Over Wilcox Festival. She has a really beautiful blog and her photography is excellent. She also visited Sweetwater Wetlands recently as well as The Sonoran Desert Museum where she witnessed Raptor Free Flight. If you have the time, take a look.

For now, here is my Big January Update:

75. Cinnamon Teal; Sweetwater Wetlands 1-14-09

76. Harris Hawk; Sweetwater Wetlands 1-14-09

77. Yellow-headed blackbird

78. Marsh wren

79. Common Moorhen

80. Sora

81. Great Blue Heron

82. Spotted Sandpiper; Lakeside park 1-14-09

83. Brown Pelican; Lakeside Park 1-14-09 (New Arizona Life List)

Hints of Springtime In Sabino Canyon

The alarm rang in the pitch black of a moonless morning at 4:30 a.m. One of the cats jumped up on the bed to investigate if I was really going to get up. It jumped down as I rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Today is the day I volunteer to at Sabino Canyon for Tucson Audubon’s Important Bird Area, or IBA Survey. Sabino Canyon is about an hour north of me and we have to start the survey within a half an hour of sunrise. Since we hike a mile into the canyon and then do the survey on the hike back, I have to get up this early to arrive on time. I hurry about making my tea and some oatmeal. I feed the cats and move laundry around. Bonnie decides she needs to barf on the tile floor in the hallway, so I hurry to clean that up. Since today is trash day I take the bag outside into a black silk night. It’s so dark I have to turn a light on so I can see my way back to the front door, but once around the corner of the garage a light breeze caresses my face and I pause in all this hectic hurry to gaze upwards at the star-studded sky.

The drive to Sabino canyon is long. Though I am early the traffic is already thick on the roads. As I pull into the parking lot the sky is turning to gray. A desert cotton tail nibbles on greenery near the visitor center where I wait for Jean and Peggy. Any day that starts off with a cute little bunny will be a good day.

We start our hike up the tram road. Already we are seeing cactus wrens, curved-billed thrashers, and phainopeplas. The sun starts to rise between the canyon walls. Saguaros are silhouetted along the ridgeline. Then a sunbeam breaks through flooding the canyon with light.

Down in a gully three white-tailed deer grazed without fear.

Along the roadway we see cardinals and a canyon towhee. Usually shy and secretive, this one hopped up on a twig and posed for me.

So did this male and female cardinal!

I can hear the roar of the creek below me in the canyon. Up here on the road the sunlight is hitting and the birds are starting to sing, but when we get down into the canyon it’s still in shadow.

We count no birds at all at our first stop for a point count. Usually we do a Transect Survey which for us is a one mile walk in one direction counting all the birds within 100 meters of our trail. But, every now and then we have to do Point Count Surveys. This involves five stops along the way where we stand at one point and count birds for 10 minutes. Then we move down the trail to the next point and do it again. In between we don’t count birds, though I do my own personal count for eBrid.

We climb over rocks and we trek through sand. We duck through brush as we head downstream. Peggy finds a raccoon track in the soft creek sand. I keep hoping to see a coati but so far, no luck. Then we find an ant lion trap, a conical indent in the sand where, if an insect wanders in it has a hard time getting out and usually the ant lion gobbles up the victim before it can escape. Along the creek the willows drop their shaggy bark. Some branches have fine green leaves and yellow catkins in flower and along with the cottonwoods’ new lime green leaves it gives the impression of a green mist along the treetops. One willow is such bloom the branches were humming with drunken bees. A Morning Cloak butterfly joins them sipping nectar far at the top out of reach of my camera. I gaze at its dark brown wings edged in cream through my binoculars. Its head is buried deep in the tree’s flowers, hidden from sight.

A ruby-crowned kinglet comes to check us out, then, uncharacteristically deices it needs to preen right in front of us. These busy little birds are often so hard to photograph simply because they are in constant motion, but today I was able to snap of 10 to 12 good shots!


We finish out point counts just south of the Sabino creek dam. I see the old road washed out from previous flooding. The creek cascades over the cracked cement and meanders on its way in a gentle fashion today. At our last stop we see the most birds, including a broad-billed hummingbird and a ladder-backed woodpecker, but it is on our walk back to the parking lot that we make our best discovery. I am constantly scanning the trees, brush, cacti and skies for motion. Suddenly I see something gray moving in the thick tangle of a mesquite. Gazing through my binoculars I’m delighted to discover a nesting pair of phainopeplas! The male flies out to a tree near a saguaro, but the female sits on the nest rearranging the twigs to better suit her taste. Her silky gray body blends perfectly with the mesquite bark. If it weren’t for her red eyes, she would disappear completely with her camouflage.


Jean has taught me an interesting thing about phainopeplas. One of their favorite foods is mistletoe berries. The phainopeplas eat the sticky red berries and excrete them onto the trees they use as perches. Since the birds tend to go back to the same perches frequently and since the seeds are still sticky when they are excreted, they stick to the tree branches in clumps until the mistletoe can take root on the branch and start its parasitic cycle all over again!

While I had seen the clumps of mistletoe hanging from trees in the desert I had never yet seen the ripe berries. Today we finally found some, as well as the seed clumps clinging to a branch.

All along the trail we see spring wildflowers blooming. Miniature lupine pokes up its blue spikes no more than 10 inches high. After having lived in Maine where the lupine can top five feet tall, this new variety amazes me. I suppose it doesn’t have time to get that tall here. It’s never wet enough or cold enough! Still, the bluish-purple blossoms have a delicate beauty.

We see yellow primrose along the trail, globe mallow and Mexican poppies, but it is not warm enough yet for them to be open. A few more hours of sun will coax their petal wide, but for now we only see their tightly wrapped buds pointing skyward. We see other flowers in bloom that we don’t know the name of, but we enjoy their beauty nonetheless.

An antelope ground squirrel gazes at us from atop a rock, then hurries away as we pass by. We stop to check out the Cooper’s hawk nest in a tall cottonwood tree a bit off the trail, and then continue on our way to the parking lot. It’s almost noontime and I’m tired and hungry as I drive back home to Sycamore canyon. As I head up the road with my head full of today’s birding expedition I suddenly notice a large black bird with its wings held in a “V” gliding over the desert. I was wondering when they would return! It’s my first sighting of a turkey vulture here in Sycamore Canyon this year. Now I know that spring is almost upon us! And then, as I round the bend onto my road I see a patch of bright orange on the side of the road. I pull over and park the car and clamber out with my camera to capture the beauty of Mexican poppies growing wild right here in Sycamore Canyon. As if that is not enough to finish off my day, a lovely jewel green insect flies right into the orange cup just in time for me to snap this picture!