Clay-colored Sparrow

I try to practice my Sparrow ID a lot. As far as the difficult ID groups go (Flycatchers, Gulls, Sparrows), I consider myself to be strongest with these little brown jobs. However, I am ashamed to admit once again that, upon further review of a photo I took last November, a little over a year ago, I made another misidentification.
Earlier this autumn I was commenting that I expected the McCormick Ponds to produce some rarity this winter, but all I had found thus far was a very early White-crowned Sparrow.

Upon reviewing this photo though I realized that what I had first written off as a Brewer's Sparrow was, in fact, a vagrant Clay-colored Sparrow. Though uncommon, these Sparrows do stray into Arizona, though I haven't heard many reports this year. This was a life bird for me, though I didn't know it at the time, and I can now add it to the list of unusual Sparrows I've seen in Phoenix, alongside Cassin's and Rufous-crowned.







So, once again I proved to myself what a novice I still am. This time it doesn't sting so badly though. Clay-colored wasn't really on my radar and now I can say McCormick has provided me with that all important rare bird to really solidify it as a grand old birding spot. This also brings my birding list for this year up to 349, only 1 away from my goal!
It's not a Brewer's Sparrow, but I still think a nice cold celebratory brew is in order.

Never Bored on Mount Ord; Never Sick of McCormick

I finally made it out to Mount Ord this Sunday. For one reason or another (work, social obligations, laziness, and standardized testing) I'd been postponing this trip for too long. At long last, I was able to head uphill and see what lurked at the higher altitudes or Maricopa County. Only about an hour outside of Phoenix, Mount Ord combines desert scrub with oak and pine forests at elevations up to 7,500 feet. It's a big, winding, rocky, dusty mountain, and the birding there can be hit or miss, but it does pull in lots of migrants and hosts some species that cannot be found anywhere else in the central part of the state. I dipped on some of Mount Ord's signature species, like the Gray Vireo, Pygmy Owls, and Band-tailed Pigeons, but still came away with some new lifers and, thanks to the hiking, total inhibition for pigging out at dinner.

Leaving the house at 4:30 am, I arrived at the base of Mount Ord well before sunrise and had to snooze in the car for a little while until I had some light. The drive up to the top of the mountain passes through some winding sage brush, the perfect habitat for Gray Vireos and Black-chinned Sparrows. The gamble paid off in that I did glimpse a few distant Black-chins, but the Vireos eluded me. Always eager to provide an omen, this Turkey Vulture circled overhead while I scoured the scrub for little gray birds.

After a fairly unproductive exploration of the summit, I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon exploring Forest Road 1688, which runs around the side of the mountain at about mid-altitude and has more of the shady, birdier pine growth. Spotted Towhees and White-breasted Nuthatches were the most common birds of the day, but one of my favorite sightings of the morning was a pair of purple-eyed Red-breatsed Nuthatches.

Mixed flocks of Nuthatches, Juniper Titmice, Kinglets, Vireos, and Juncos provided little bursts of excitement throughout the hike, but there were also long dry spells. The downside of mountain birding is that you move at half-speed while the birds still move just as quickly, and they have such a massive area in which to move...it can be a photographic quagmire. This Hermit Thrush was about the only other bird that came out to have its picture taken, content as he was to rustle around in low-lying juniper while everyone else cavorted up high.

There was a lot of down time (birdless time) on the mountain, but always still plenty to see. The mountain views are stunning, but I seldom remember to take pictures of them, in part because the photos don't do them justice. There are little things to appreciate on Mount Ord too.

One doesn't have to be a hard core lepidopterist to enjoy the Painted Lady Butterflies, nor an arachniholic to appreciate the Desert Tarantulas. I ended the Mount Ord excursion with about thirty species of birds and enough dust in my shoes to make a whole new person.

On the way back from Mount Ord, I decided to swing by the McCormick Ponds to supplement my very shallow avian photo pool. I didn't find the big rarity I'm waiting for there, but did get to practice some action photography. As the evening started to set in, hungry birds started to move out.

Large and slow, Great Blue Herons are accommodating subjects for in-flight photography.

Timid and fast, Kingfishers are generally a photographic nightmare. This doesn't make birders or photographers or birdographers love them any less.



Killdeer aren't super fast or super shy, but they are really loud and annoying. Up to this point, I did not have any passable in-flight photos of these raucous birds, so it was very nice to have this curious cuss cruise by with unusual poise and serenity for the perennially anxious species.

Like so many of the Phoenix area waterways, the McCormick features are tied to a well-watered and well-maintained golf course. Unfortunately, golf courses don't have the same appeal for shorebirds as sod farms, but they do provide a decent setting for some other avifauna. The McCormick Ranch course, for example, is covered with Say's Phoebes.

They're pretty skilled aviators. Catching bugs in the air is like bobbing for apples while flapping your arms really fast. Ok--I've never actually bobbed for apples in that manner, but I bet it's a challenge.

No Common Cuckoos or Northern Lapwings turned in Phoenix this weekend, but the birding was great as ever.

Meanwhile, back on the Ranch

I went to McCormick Ranch on Friday to see who was hanging around the ponds. A few weeks ago the place was swarming with Great Egrets, dozens and dozens of them all jostling for space. On Friday there were none, but there were some of Northern Rough-Winged Swallows and Herons, along with the normal Sparrow regimen one expects around the ponds.

There was also this solitary Red-Winged Blackbird, who seemed a little out of it.

The second fun sighting was this awkward Great Blue Heron. It picked a rather cumbersome perch and then tried to make it work for a good fifteen seconds before giving up and flying to another.

Impressive wingspan!

There were some House Finches and Mockingbirds adorning the palo verde trees, and I had to stop and photograph this unusually confident Mourning Dove. It's nice to pause and remind myself what pretty birds they really are.

A little troop of Least Sandpipers was a somewhat unusual sighting for the ponds. 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.

But, if we imagine for a second that the world is shrunk to their size, a troop of feeding Least Sandpipers can become quite the terror! This ferocious gang devastated the local filth deposits and engulfed tiny invertebrates by the score. With their battle cry of "Peeeeeep," they scoured the shoreline and gobbled everything in their path, taking no prisoners and leaving no trace of their conquest. 

 I kinda dig the perspective happening here. It looks like this last Sandpiper's legs are way out of whack with its body. Behold the merciless stare of an omnivorous automaton!

This is probably the last thing you'll ever see if you're a pond fungus, insect larva, or anything else that can fit down the Least Sandpiper's maw.

Just Another Day After The Office

I had some time after work to go birding by the McCormick Ponds near Scottsdale. Although the bird populations have skyrocketed since I visited in the fall, there was a certain dearth of color on display. Gadwalls, Cormorants, Mallards, Coots, and Great Egrets were the birds of the day, and the green headed Mallards, no doubt glad to be free of migratory duck competition, felt like undisputed prom queens (kings?). The Vermillion Flycatchers, which had been consistently visible last year, were no where to be found, so I set out to practice my in-flight photography.



We're reading Peter Pan, among other books, in my 4th grade class right now. In the story, the children delightedly discover that with a happy little thought and some pixie dust, they can fly. Birds have it even easier. They can fly happily, or in a state of fear, hunger, mindless habit, etc. And they don't need any contaminating pixie dust like those moths and butterflies either. If only a happy thought and a spritz of dust were enough to generate nice in-flight photography...
It's a work in progress, I guess what they call a labor of love.

The Mallards were reveling in the ponds, probably content in knowing that they were the most beautiful birds to be seen, an unusual if somewhat unfair recognition for them.

Although Gadwalls are still very pretty and intricately plumed ducks, it says something about their style that the black beak is perhaps their most striking feature. Why is it that the Mandarins and Wood Ducks have developed such extensive plumage to attract a mate, and yet the Gadwalls remain in their stately grays and browns?

I'm really bad with the shorebirds, but I believe this is a non-breeding Spotted Sandpiper. He didn't look too sure of himself either as he skulked along the water's edge. It's kinda far away but I like his pose here and the concentric water ripples behind him.

Even the little peeps get moving pretty quickly, and I didn't quite get the right focus before he was gone.

It was kind of a brown bird day, but that's just as well. It was some good photo practice and got me geared up for this weekend's trip down to southeast Arizona, where the birds and colors abound.

Awesome Bird Monday

After a relatively uneventful morning at the Desert Botanical Garden, I decided to stop by the McCormick Ranch pond were I had yesterday seen the Sora and the Common Yellowthroat. Although the company was very nice at the DBG, and we did see the normal desert quarry one comes to expect at the Gardens, I did not get a single good picture, nor any new birds. That's just the way the cookie crumbles sometime, so I hadn't quite got my fix.

My stomach was communicating to my brain that it was lunch time, but my brain had to explain to my stomach that we just won't be satisfied, even after a meal, with so little to show for our troubles.

I parked farther away from the pond this time and walked along more of the McCormick golf course, and saw nothing along the way other than a few Grackles.

However, as soon as I reached the southern banks of the 'U' shaped pond, I saw that treasure of a bird, the fiery flyer I had been longing to see since I got my camera: the Vermillion Flycatcher.

Photography in noonday lighting is never ideal, especially when you're trying to track a flycatcher that never let's you get closer than 30 feet, only sits still in 3 second increments, and keeps going from shady to sunny perches. I guess I couldn't have it all on my photographical debut with the Vermillion, so when I took off across the pond, I followed in his direction without expecting or needing to see more.

It was a bonus then to see a weather-beaten Harris's Hawk in one of the larger trees on the north side of the pond. He stayed put for a while and seemed content to finish with his preening before moving on.

 At 20-21 inches tall, the Harris's Hawk is about average size for a Hawk, but this specimen seemed especially large to me.

There's no other hawk with the dark head, and dark body offset by the brown shoulders. The tattered end of his tail feathers indicate this hawk has seen the seasons change many times.

 Yes, he is scratching his lower back with his face--no big deal. The white rump here and white tips of the tail (almost worn away) enclose the dark tail, and make for an easy identification when you see a Harris's flying overhead.

 Is it just me, or does this Harris's have especially prominent eyebrows?

 It was a tiny bit frustrating to never get the clean body shot--a stick always seemed to be in the way.

By time the Harris's Hawk left, I could no longer see the male Vermillion Flycatcher, but I did notice a Black Phoebe arguing with a slightly smaller bird, which turned out to be the lovely female!

 She was even more skittish than the male, but still preferred to stay out in the sunshine. I have to admit, I woefully underestimated how bright it was. I was shooting here at f6.3 and 400 ISO--error.

The female Vermillion Flycatcher has to be one of the prettiest lady birds out there. It was odd though, that the male and female never occupied the same side of the pond. It was almost like they stayed opposite each other on purpose, as if they weren't getting along or didn't want to compete for food.

I made my way back into the bullrushes hoping to stir up some warblers or sparrows. I did get a decent look at a pair of Marsh Wrens, which was a new bird, but never enough for a picture. It was at this point a sympathetic Cooper's Hawk landed in a nearby mesquite tree, paused for a quick shot (again with me underestimating the brightness), and then departed. Two new birds in as many minutes!

Excelsior Accipiter!

This swampy soiree was already hugely successful, and on my way back around the Vermillion male gave me one more look.

 That poor other bird has never felt more dull and drab in its entire life. To be fair, it'll probably never get it's picture taken again either. Vermillion Flycatcher, you're the best!

Dear McCormick Ranch Drainage Pond,

I'm sorry I ever thought you didn't have much to offer. I'm sorry that, even after seeing my first Sora hidden on your reedy banks, I did not think you were the most special pond in Arizona. Thank you for giving me another chance, and for hosting awesome birds today.

I love you, to the extent a man can love a pond, which it turns out is a lot.