Black-Throated Gray Warbler

This is my first good (yes I'll say it!) batch of Warbler photos, and I am very glad this fine looking Black-Throated Gray Warbler agreed to be my subject. The gray back, white wingbars, black speckling on the white breast, and of course the streaked hood with yellow lores (the bird's sinus area) all set this bird apart from the many other species of warbler. Successfully getting some good warbler shots is really encouraging for the fledgling photographer. I saw this warbler first at the Desert Botanical Gardens last weekend, but was unable to get a decent picture. I was again taunted by the Wilson's Warbler as well a couple MacGillivray's Warblers at the Gilbert Water Ranch, but this charitable bird took pity and waited for me in the sunny tree next to the restrooms. She currently holds the esteemed title of "Best Warbler Yet".
The absence of an actual black throat means this is a female. I have no complaints at all.

She's a handsome gal. Note the yellow patches on the lores.

Black-Necked Stilt

You'll find Stilts just about anywhere you'll find Avocets. Like the Avocet, they are immediately recognizable with their uniquely black back and neck, along with their white eyebrow and slender red legs.  Like the Avocet, these birds seem to walk the thin line between grace and fragility. They look like they'll break at any moment as they run along the shallow water, swinging their heads side to side to stir up food.
They also have a large population at the Water Ranch in Phoenix.

American Avocet

These graceful wading birds populate the U.S. west of the line of semi-aridity (about half-way through Texas). They have long, slender, bluish-gray legs with a lovely black accentuation on their backs. Their breeding plumage comes in as a strong rusty coloring all the way up their necks and heads, and their delicate bills have a noticeable upturn to them.

This specimen was one of eight at the Glendale Recharge Ponds in west Phoenix.

Greater Yellowlegs

This predictably named sandpiper has all the normal trimmings of the innocuous shorebird group. A dull white to its underside with darker browns and grays speckling its back. At 14 inches they're one of the taller, non-heron wading birds, and always lord it over the Lesser Yellowlegs I am sure.

Great Egret

The anatomical difference between herons, egrets, and bitterns is pretty negligible. Egrets tend to be whiter and have more plumage on their head and neck, while herons tend to be a little bit bulkier. The Great Egret is the largest of the egret group, reaching heights up to 40 inches. Its dagger-like bill is entirely yellow, as is its eye, while the legs and feet are a uniform black. They are locally common throughout the U.S., though they tend to avoid colder parts of the country.

Warbling Vireo

The Warbling Vireo is a small, moderately colorful bird with a whitish breast and a noticeable, streaked eye-ring. Denominations of Western Warbling Vireos are noticeably more yellow on their sides, not quite with the vibrancy of a warbler, but enough to catch the eye. They look and act a bit like a cross between a warbler and a verdin, maintaining a horizontal posture while in constant motion. The Warbling Vireo does not have any wingbars or speckling, which actually aids in its identification. This specimen was found at the Gilbert Water Ranch in Phoenix.

Least Sandpiper

These birds are really putting all of their eggs in the "The meek shall inherit the earth" basket. They're so much smaller than other common waterbirds (barely reaching 6 inches), and they spend most of their time with their faces stuck in the mud. Still, they're pretty cute little fluff balls. They venture into the Southern United States to winter, and spend their summers up North.

Spotted Sandpiper

The Spotted is the most common inland Sandpiper although their behavior doesn't otherwise set them apart from other Sandpipers. Aside from laying more eggs, I wonder what gives a species like this such an advantage over other similar species. There doesn't seem to be any clear superiority to the Spotted Sandpiper over the Least Sandpiper, but the Spotted has managed to spread its range over the entire North American continent nonetheless.
This lone Spotted Sandpiper (does that make him a Solitary Sandpiper? >haha birding joke<) is not in its breeding plumage and therefore is without the heavy spotting on its flank, but the yellow legs, size, white shoulder patch, white eye ring and slight yellow on the bill, as well as its presence in Phoenix, all still give it away.

Abert's Towhee

The Abert's Towhee isn't much to look at. Its high-pitch, single note call isn't much to hear. If asked, it would probably admit that its favorite color is grey.

It is fun to watch them hop back and forth, stirring up top soil and excavating edibles in a lively fashion, but it's appropriate they seem to prefer life on the ground and in the shadows. After all, they do have bandit masks.

Green-Tailed Towhee

The Green-Tailed is the smallest and slenderest of the Towhees, but it is also the most colorful. With an olive to yellow coloration on their wings and tails, a rufus cap, and a white throat complimenting the gray and white breast, they may also be one of the more colorful birds one will see flitting about on the ground. This purdy bird was at the Rio Salado Audobon Preserve in Central Phoenix.
I have also seen them in increasing numbers at the Desert Botanical Gardens (pictured at the bottom) as they concentrate their populations farther south for the winter.

Here he stands, lord of his domain

Something alerted him, and he jumped to the nearest vantage point with his rufus crest engaged.

This is my favorite picture. He looks so distressed, even sad, but the white throat, belly, and peachy sides are also clearly visible. these birds have a lot of color going on, and aren't afraid to show it.

 Note here the white lores, throat, and

Unfortunately I couldn't fit the bird in the frame here, but it still shows how intricately colored these birds are.

Roadrunnin'

In the famous old cartoon, an incompetent and startlingly emaciated Wile E. Coyote tests his destructibility while in pursuit of the quick and clever Roadrunner. While the Coyote casts a menacing, if ultimately harmless figure, the Roadrunner is a gentle, aloof creature who wants nothing more than to run fast and eat seeds along a saguaro-speckled highway.

Those cartoons were silly fun. Like many people, I even felt that after a while the Coyote really deserved to catch the Roadrunner. But thinkin on it now, it seems like in all the craziness of that show, the Roadrunner's characterization as gentle is perhaps the most unbelievable aspect.

I love Roadrunners. They're big, beautiful, iconic desert birds, and it's truly jaw-dropping every time I see them out and about, even though they're fairly common. They've got cool looking feet and are perhaps the only birds that come with built-in racing stripes! That being said, the Roadrunners I've observed around Arizona are themselves much more ruthless and determined predators than our scraggly coyotes.

Roadrunners are successful predators because they're not too picky. As any bird book will mention, they eat bugs, small reptiles, rodents, birds, and even fruit if they must. Normally I wouldn't think of a bird from the cuckoo family as a vicious killer, nor even a meat-eater for that matter. Now, imagining a Roadrunner eating bugs of lizards seems appropriate, even familiar. I've had the pleasure of observing exactly this sort of feeding behavior from time to time.

Here a male Roadrunner--identified as a male by the blue and orange in his eye stripe--proudly poses with his cold-blooded kill.

I associate certain bird groups as eating certain things. I read that familiar caption, "eats small rodents, birds..." and usually don't think much of it. For the longest time, it almost struck me as a sort of disclaimer, just in case one crazy Roadrunner breaks free from the bug & lizard racket to go after a mouse. I guess I never really believed it because I had never seen it. Hawks, Falcons, Owls...those are the birds that eat other birds, that eat mammals. They've got talons and hooked beaks; they're built for it. Lots of birds eat bugs, and plenty will go for reptiles if given the chance. Without any experience to the contrary, I had just lumped Roadrunners in that group as well.  Recently I was confronted with the blunt, graphic reality that Roadrunners really are thoroughly predacious birds, that they do catch warm blooded creatures, and that they'll tear them apart.

This Roadrunner, a stout beast-of-a-bird pushing twenty-four inches in length, caught what I believe to be a young House Finch along a perimeter fence at the Desert Botanical Gardens. It carried its quarry to a little sunny patch of dried palo verde needles, and then began to disassemble its meal.

The Roadrunner has neither gripping talons nor an exceptionally strong sharp beak. While pressing his long tail against the fence to sturdy himself, he thrashed his prey back and forth, back and forth, working the edibles loose until he could swallow them in manageable chunks.

Raptors can catch, kill, and eat their warm-blooded prey with efficiency and precision. Raptors are really good at what they do. While the Roadrunner is usually a graceful, dexterous creature, here it resorted to blunt force, to wild motion, as it tasted blood. He was determined, but unlike the raptors, seemed out of his element.

Roadrunner Rex was very focused on his grisly task and paid me little heed, even as I struggled to fit both the Roadrunner and the Finch into the frame. The feast was up close and and personal, shocking and transfixing to observe...

I don't really know how to explain it. There was just something so disordered about this scene, and not just because of the guts and gore. Looking at a Roadrunner's cool and unique anatomy, even knowing the expert analysis, it just doesn't seem like this kind of graduated predator...and yet here was the proof, staring me red in the face.

This is more the image I'm used to seeing: a composed, colorful bird with a keen eye for the next little meal that might scuttle across its path.

But there is another side to the Greater Roadrunner. This side is seldom seen, though not because of shyness. It's not the side of the Roadrunner that we see in Saturday morning cartoons or even in many quintessential Roadrunner photos.

I guess it's the same harsh realization we come to with many other wild animals. Just when we think they're tame, they rebel. Just when we think the Roadrunner will zig, it zags. In the end, I know no more about this intriguing bird or how to predict its behavior than Wile E. Coyote.

Turkey Vulture

A common and recognizable sight across North America, the Turkey Vulture is the dingy janitor of the bird world. Although nearly eagle-size, their body is a non-descript black built only to glide, with no real muscular capacity to exert much force or move incisively. However, the overlapping thick flesh on their heads does provide a protection against the bacteria they encounter while feeding on over-ripe carrion, which does give vultures a certain (ugliness) specialness of their own.