Big January: In Praise of Vacant Lots

Some of my best times birding are spent looking for the hidden spots of the world. I find the most unusual birds and sometimes the most peace in vacant lots. They are undiscovered and abandoned places, full of mystery, trash and treasure, and if undisturbed for a long time, they are often the happy habitats of birds.

We have driven to Coolidge for the afternoon to spend some time with my son. It is football playoffs time and as the men settle in for their football game I wander out into the warm afternoon sun. As I pad across the pavement a Eurasian collared-dove eyes me from the overhead wires.


I glance across the flat expanse of desert before me. I use to find so many birds in this vacant lot, but today only jackrabbits scuttle up from the brush as I hike across the dusty earth. A lone Say’s Phoebe bobs its tail from the top of some desert broom. It has a vast terrain to hunt in, but it looks like slim pickin’s to me! In the distance I see the crumbling walls of the Casa Grande Monument. I head in that direction, but take a meandering path.

For the next half mile I see nothing other than mourning doves and grackles flying overhead but as I cross the road I start to hear the sounds of birds. In the two years that I have lived in Arizona I have watched the open land disappear as new neighborhoods and houses go in. Along with the neighborhoods come the new schools, and more land is lost to wildlife. Out here the west seems so big that the loss of a few acres doesn’t seem like it could matter much, but it does. Each little piece of earth is home to wildlife and as the habitat is fragmented and the humans become more numerous the wildlife moves on, moves out, or dies off all together. My son says he has not seen the little owl in the vacant lot I just crossed in a very long time.


But I am here now, here in this wild and discarded place. A neighborhood is growing to the west of it. The curbs and roadways are already in. To the East a new school has risen since the last time I was here. How do they build them so fast? And right here where old trees tower, and remnants of another day lie discarded and rotting the trees and bushes are full of evening birds.

I walk soft as I can on the dried grasses. Leaves and sticks crumble and crack beneath my feet. Mourning doves make heavy silhouettes as they roost on utility wires and on the tangled branches of the trees. I stop to admire the scraggly branches that loom above my head.

Why do I find the bare leaved trees so beautiful and sculptural? In this evening light their bark looks gilt with gold.

A silver silo rises up from the golden land, a monument to man’s discarded past.



Farther down through the vacant lot I wander with yellow-rumped warblers singing me along my path. They don’t seem to mind the garbage strewn about their domain, but I start to wonder if I am safe back here. I’m quite a ways off the road. Would anyone hear me if I needed help?




A flock of White crowned sparrows flutters by and lands in a thicket. Their thin voices call a soft “zeet zeet!” in the waning light.

Then a flock of Gambel’s quail scurries across an opening. Everything about them says, “Hurry! Hurry!” but they have nothing to fear from me. How I wish I could communicate that to them.

With the sun below the horizon the full moon rises in the eastern sky. It is a round balloon in a lavender sea.

I know my time here is short now but I see a lone dark shape high atop a utility pole in the distance. I walk closer hoping for a better view but as I do clouds of mourning doves rise from the tree lined canal that borders the vacant lot and separates it from the Casa Grande monument. Wave after wave of birds rise alerting the hawk to my presence. It lifts on dark wings into the sky and vanishes into the night.

In the pale light that remains I gaze across the canal as if gazing across time to an ancient day when native peoples roamed this land and grew crops that they irrigated with water from the Gila River. The adobe walls of the Casa Grande Ruins are all that remains of those times and those days. I wonder what birds and wildlife lived here then?

As I head back out to the road the mourning doves settle down again to their nighttime roosts. There had to be at least 200 hundred of them, maybe more. As the darkness deepens I grow colder and a bit more concerned about my location. I call my son who comes and picks me up in the moonlit night. If the vacant lot is still here next time I return, I will come back again. The birds are waiting for me.

Big January Update:

70. Brewer’s Blackbird; Rita Ranch Fry’s Parking lot 1-10-09
71. Green winged Teal; Santa Cruz River at Ina Road, Marana 1-10-09
72. Road Runner; Picacho resevour dirt road. 1-10-09
73. Eurasian collared Dove; Coolidge, AZ 1-10-09
74. Great-horned Owl; Sycamore Canyon 1-12-09

Big January Participants:

Larry: The Brownstone Birding Blog
Mary: Mary’s View
Mike: 10,000 Birds
Ruth: Body, Soul and Spirit

The Strobels: Bird Couple

If you are participating in Big January just let me know and I will add your link to this list!

Good Birding Everyone!

Scroll down to see Skywatch Friday: Coolidge Sunset/Moonrise

Skywatch Friday: November Gold (Part 1)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Here in Sycamore Canyon under currently cloudy skies, the wind tattered Canna lilies are blooming once again before the cold and diminished hours of daylight kill them off for good.

A female great-tailed grackle sits atop a utility pole in Coolidge, AZ on November 2, 2008

The foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains are bathed in the golden light of a late November afternoon. Gus took this photo on our November 15th hike along the Sycamore Canyon Wash's west rim. November is a dry and golden month here also, but we get our gold from the grass and the late evening light, instead of from the leaves. It makes me wonder what colors December will bring!

Visit Skywatch Friday to see the colors of the skies from around the world!

Scroll down to see November Gray, photos I took this of this morning's rainy skies.

Photographer's notes: All photos taken with the Nikon D80

1. Canna lily photo by Kathie 11-24-08 70-300mm lens 1/400, F 5.6
2. Golden Grackle by Kathie 11-2-08 70-300mm lens 1/320, F 5.6
3. Golden Foothills by Gus 11-15-08 70-300mm lens 1/500, F 4.5
   
   

Driving Back to Coolidge

On the dry and dusty Saturday between Good Friday and Easter I head back to Coolidge to finish painting the baby’s mural. I know the next few weeks will be busy and the baby could come at any time. Since Gus has to work, I am suddenly struck with a painting mood. I pack my bags and drive north. Traffic is thick enough heading north but the south- east bound lanes of I-10 are virtually stopped as I drive by. Later I find out the hold-up was due to the police chasing a murder suspect from Phoenix to Tucson. Meanwhile, I concentrate on my side of the highway and watch for Picacho Peak to appear in the front windshield, which means I am getting close to getting off this gray ribbon of asphalt. At exit 111 I head north past fallow fields where cotton grew over the winter. In some fields green oceans of grass hay are blowing in the breeze today. Parallel to the road a wide irrigation ditch flows with muddy water. At various points smaller ditches break off to deliver this precious resource to farmland. In the distance I see a charcoal gray column of smoke rise at the edge of one of these smaller irrigation ditches. Along the bank I can see the tangerine colored flames licking the dirt and devouring weeds. In this way farmers control the spread of weeds into their fields of crops. In the dry dust of the flat and vacant farmland two dust devils swirl fifty feet into the air before dissipating in the empty blue sky.


As soon as I arrive at the house I unpack my paints, set up the boom box and get to work. I paint sand, birds, and grass to the songs of Norah Jones, John Denver and James Taylor. Then, to mix is up I listen to Trisha Yearwood and Colin Ray. It’s a funny thing about painting that often I think it’s all coming out wrong, then I walk away and come back to say, well, that’s not so bad after all! Every painting gets to a point where it’s just time to stop or you’ll make it worse. I stop and take a break. I thought I was done. I was going to head home but there is this one area I really don’t like, and…

Well, before I know it I am painting again. I fixed the area I wanted to, which was the grassy bank alongside the lighthouse, but then I messed with the sand a little too much for my liking. I may have to come back one more time to fix the sand and paint wildflowers on the grass, but for now the mural is done and the baby can come if it wants to! At least the parents can rearrange baby furniture now!

On Easter morning I take a short walk in the early morning sunlight. I discover wildflowers in the desert where the kids walk their dogs. Beyond the chain link fence around the schoolyard a lavender blanket of flowers covers the ground. From the rooftops the great-tailed grackles whistle sharply, piercing the calm Sunday morning with their shrill calls. Mourning doves coo from walkways and walls, or fly past my head at warp speed. Last time I was here I did a bird count. Great-tailed crackles and mourning doves rule this old cowboy town. However, I did find a nesting Anna’s hummingbird in an aspen tree near a playground, as well as an orange –crowned warbler and a red-shafted flicker in a newly landscaped water retention basin. The flicker looked so lost as it searched for food and refuge in its greatly diminished habitat.

Off Northern Ave an old farm still stands with livestock and barnyard birds still in residence. The crowing roosters awakened me the first night I slept here, but the use of a fan soon drown out their morning calls. Beyond the farm a brand new neighborhood has sprouted like wheat from the fields. It is lined up on the eastern edge of what's left of the farmland and on the western side the older section of town stares back. I've no doubt the new homes will creep across the remaining grass until the two sides of town are nose to nose. I stand at the corner and look at fallow fields and dilapidated barns but as I turn to head back perfect landscaping greets me at the corner of the neighborhood. This agave plant is spouting an asparagus shaped bud that will soon tower over my head in bloom.


Today I point my vehicle southward and home. Once more the gray asphalt ribbon spreads before me. As I drive past the Arizona Children’s home on Rt. 87 I see large black birds in old dead trees near the road. As I pass by I suddenly realize they are vultures and I am tempted to go back and take pictures, for I do have the camera with me, but I was up until 2:30 this morning and I am anxious to beat the traffic and get home to Gus. Farther down the road I notice perfectly square bales of hay strewn across one of those green fields I saw yesterday on my drive up. With the sun slanting softly across the flat land illuminating the mountains beyond I actually did start to pull the car over, it was almost too much to resist, but at the last moment I speed up again and continue home. This photo of a green Easter sunrise lives only in my mind.

Home Again

When I left for Coolidge and the Phoenix Art Museum on Tuesday one of the last birds I saw was a beautiful male Gambel’s quail perched on the railing outside the den window. When I arrived home late yesterday afternoon I spotted one yet again in the same position as I drove up to my house past the wash. An appropriate welcome home, don’t you think?

This morning I awake at 5:30 am and step out the back door with my cup of green tea steaming in my cup. The sky is just beginning to lighten but a few stars are still visible in this quiet pre-dawn moment. A gentle breeze tickles the branches of the Palo Verde tree still sitting in its box, waiting to be planted. I’m struck by how still it is; not a manmade sound in the world. Overhead a triangle of stars hangs in the blue-black sky. I lift my heart in thankfulness to be alive, something I haven’t done in a very long time.

I stayed in Coolidge longer than originally planned. As usual, this project took much longer than I anticipated and I went much grander than I thought I would. As a result I will have to travel back to finish my painting, but here’s a brief peek at the progress.

Day one: sketch the drawing, paint the background. The water took longer to paint than I thought it would and more paint than I thought it would. I discovered that painting on a textured surface makes it really hard to paint a straight line.

Day Two: Paint lighthouse and the dolphin. The lighthouse is an artistic representation of the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec, ME. My son and his wife are both from the east coast and they are missing the ocean and access to the beach. I’m trying to give them and their son a sense of that here in the middle of the desert.

Day Three: Finish the arctic tern and a few other details in the morning, then drive home before traffic in Tucson gets bad.

I will have to return to Coolidge next week to finish my painting, but for now I need to get home. I need to rest my arms and give the painting a time to stew in my mind before I fill in the rest of the details. It’s warm and sunny as I head out. I have to turn the air conditioner on in the car. We’ve had temperatures in the 80’s the past three days that I have been here. All along the highway wildflowers are blooming, especially near Picacho Peak, which is one of the best wildflower viewing areas in the state. On my drive home I spot a turkey vulture soaring overhead in this location. I hope to visit soon before they are all gone by and capture some photographs of this amazing display. (Note: More postings on this trip to follow.)