Local, Organic, non-GMO: Birding

Ah, to be young and unencumbered again...those halcyon days when I could go birding any day of the week and crank out 160+ blogposts a year. Of course, being poor and de-facto celibate wasn't great during all the non-birding time (not that Butler's Birds is rolling in dough now--still waiting for the big Bird Blog corporate sponsorships to come through...err hem...Swarovski...), but it did have its appeals, not a perpetual weekend so much as a perpetual casual Hawaiian-shirt-and-jeans Friday.

I reminisce now, with a 45+ hour-a-week job and a full-blown toddler, another on the way. These are all things for which I am grateful. These are all things that make the birding pastime a bit complicated, and bring in to sharpest relief the appeals and the necessities of patch birding. They say necessity is the mother of invention. Case in point: scarce insects in winter necessitate normally insectivorous birds feeding on the ground like Towhees.  

When it comes to birding and balancing other obligations, necessity is also the mother of appreciation. Over the Holidays I followed other's exciting starts to 2019's 5MR Challenge while visiting family back in Arizona, unable to kickstart my own local birding but increasingly jazzed about doing so. It also kept me engaged in Phoenix, just around the neighborhood, to get the most out of what was there. I walked the dog; I walked the toddlers: I walked the grandparents; I walked the great grandparents; I feigned indigestion and walked myself. (Ok...I feigned nothing). I birded light, and without much depth or promise but I birded often. Hummingbirds stay busy in the same bailiwick and they seem pretty laid back, right? Right??

I also managed to get out proper for a few hours one morning and hit up an old haunt with Pops. At the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert we logged 67 species by 10:30am. This is not to brag about anything--for one that's a usual day and, for two, bragging about bird numbers is pretty lame. It is to--only for a moment--bemoan that in my 5MR I'm at 53 species, total, for the year.
Highlights were finding Fox Sparrow and Cedar Waxwings at the site, which are uncommon in the valley, and of course reminding myself how Good it is to be out doing dedicated bird-sleuthing on a crisp morning.

But the most satisfying experience from this here-and-there birding (How's that for a blog name: Here and There Birding?) was actually a neighborhood find of my Dad's. 

There's been an Acorn Woodpecker wintering a few houses down, in some out-of-the-way royal palms where there is ample storage space. In case you're wondering yes, I did walk backyards 130 yards down the street while maintaining steady eye contact (couldn't risk a Gila running it off and exchanging places, obvi) so as to claim this bird, officially and legitimately, from the yard list. 

I wouldn't think of royal palms as being any sort of vagrant/migrant trap, but another traditionally northern woodpecker from years before would says otherwise. They have their, err hem, niche.

At any rate, hopes springs eternal and I am now back in action in Wayne, NC, leaving no stone unturned in a quest to post the biggest, best, baddest 5MR I can --and also, most of all, enjoy regular birding. 

P.S. Leaving all stones overturned, has, thus far, a 0% correlation to finding birds.

Who..? Where..? What HAPPENED!?!?

It has been over 14 months since Butler's Birds last posted, which is fairly reflective of a pretty fallow period of birding, excursioning, and adventuring over that time.
This is NOT to say the last year has been uneventful. So much has changed. Species have been split and lumped. Thayer's Gull Gull is no more. Rivoli's Hummingbird is vogue. Bottle rockets and fire crackers are still more heavily regulated than assault rifles (ok that's not a change). Amazon, Tesla, Google, Chase, and Facebook now seem to control most of the world. Norway reminded people that it's very good at Winter sports. Tottenham won at Stamford Bridge.
More locally, Butler's Birds is now a Butler brood. The wife and I hatched a Red-Headed Chubby Thigh, on whom I blame most of my lack of bird-blogging and sleep deprivation as well as my constant delight. He is crawling and pulling up and large and has 3 teeth.

                 

During these months away, I have missed birding very much, even when able to squeeze a little in here and there. Although weekly birding and blogging will be a thing of the past, I am committed and confident in getting more regular again. I will be taking my birding fiber.

Being so long removed has its consequences. I am no longer #1 in Wayne County, NC, nor was I even top 3! It's been over a year since I lifered on anything.
I also got, like, really bad at birding. During a recent visit to North Carolina, I was shocked and appalled and how many calls and songs with which I had to reacquaint. I was confusing NOCA songs with CAWR, and calling Semi-palm Sandpipers Westerns. Why am I confessing this? I don't know, half seeking absolution and half seeking condemnation.

Ideally, I could go through a get-my-shit-together birding montage, coached by a raspy voiced over-the-hill formerly great birder who would put me thorugh a series of rigorous exercises in that would show steady, sweaty improvement, IDing first skulky sparrows and then empids and then nocturnally migrating thrushes by their flight calls.
Then I would win a head-to-head birding competition against an evil Russian birder, who had killed my good but platonic friend Apollo Creed in an earlier birding competition.
But, since I had no montage, grizzled trainer, or Russian nemesis, it was just slow and steady, back to
basics, one foot in front of the other...

Apparently I say "...For Pete's sake" now. How domesticated : /

Swamp Sparrow was a nice county bird, one I have seen only a handful of times generally. While not fully crushed, I spent enough time with this bird to include it in the next installment/update of the Salute to Sparrows, the American Idol of the emberizid world and perhaps the most worthwhile thing I ever did with this bird blog, (any time one can make birding more judgmental or exclusive).

As you may have heard, 5-Mile Radius birding patches and competitions are totally hot right now, may they always remain that way. Although I have not really put it o good use, I have a pretty diversified 5MR in Phoenix currently, now in range of the Salt River, which could net over 90 species on a good day.
However, the 5MR from our home base in North Carolina was...disadvantageous. One definite downside to the rural scene is the distance between amenities. It's more than 5 miles to the nearest grocery store, and 3.5 to the nearest convenience store. Similarly, all the hotspots in the county are 7+ miles away from home base, meaning a 5MR expectation for this area would be...30-40 species on the best of days? It doesn't lend itself to head-to-head challenges, unless we switch it up to golf rules to who can seen the fewest birds in their 5MR while still trying hard.
It makes birds like a Red-shouldered Hawk, found in the same shoe-sucking Swamp sparrowing slough, very valuable indeed.

And yard bird Waxwings are even better, if not really accommodating.



Also of interest in the area (and also out of 5MR range) was an old orchard, complete with decrepit silo containing nesting Swallows and an impressive bone pile.
To add to the atmosphere, it's also just down the road from an old insane asylum...

Carolina Chickadees have a cool sort of echo call or whistle--4 notes total--a sort of 'tee hee tee haw'
Strangely, I hear this often in NC, but have not encountered nay recordings on it on the birding apps. Another confession: try though I did, I couldn't not visually distinguish between CACH and BCCH--not that one has to in NC but...still.

It would be nice to explode onto the bird blogging scene with a fantastic post full of witty observations and face melting photos, but we're just not back there yet. Were we ever??

We'll see what the weekend brings.

Hello again Nerds.

Working Out a Work Patch

Working a 7am-4pm job can be hard on a fellow's birding, especially when the sun sets early and there's still prep work to be done for the following day's grind. It's often a tight, sweaty squeeze--like to many suits on an elevator--but the weekend outlet isn't always enough, and sometimes you've got to fit in some weekday birding, even if it's just a quick fix, a supplementary high. It doesn't matter if they're mostly trash birds; they've got feathers and they move, so it's still birding. 

Black Phoebe by the parking lot irrigation gate? Hell yeah!!!

Many people have the benefit of yard birding of course, but for us apartment dwellers that doesn't amount to much, so the next option is finding a local patch around home or work, usually a park or something similar. Phoenix has some decent birding parks, like Encanto downtown or Grenada Park more central, but these require a bit too much rush hour driving for me to hit up on a weekday evening. The campus where I work has actually turned up a couple of decent birds for me--American Robin and Peregrine Falcon, and Lark Sparrow, which are uncommon in central Phoenix--but I can't well use my place of work as my work patch; that'd be distracting for me and everyone else there who knows me and sees me walking the grounds with all the gear, plus there's not much water. 

So, I decided to head a few blocks northeast to the SRP Arizona Falls canal spillway, a nice little attempt at a canal filtration/regulation gate with some walking paths and water works. It's very small--easily covered in 10 minutes--and also adjacent to Herberger park, which has some grass and a few pine trees, as well as tamarisks, that have already produced Red-naped Sapsuckers and maybe some migrants in a month.

The spillway itself is a nice little construction, and its various channels provided a nice break up of the monotonous brown trench canal scene. The higher concentration of birds here, like these Mallards seconds that motion.

It's funny how starting a new patch list, especially one for a small patch with little going for it other than location, readjusts expectations. Once again I'm really looking forward to a Kestrel Sighting. Red-naped Sapsuckers were a treat and I haven't even recorded House Finches yet in two tries! Yes indeed, I'm only at 21 species for the lil' place, and the proudest sighting of all is a skittish Spotted Sandpiper, along with an unseasonably early Cliff Swallow (it's also unseasonably warm, friggin' 88 today!).

Like the other park birding scenes in Phoenix, the lessened variety compared to proper nature preserves or refuges is made up for, in small part, by much closer looks at those species that will still abide the heat and noise, and now peeping tom birders, of the city.

At any preserve in Maricopa County, Wigeon are pretty near the bottom of the totem pole in terms of commonality and appearance among waterfowl, but along a canal, man, they're hot commodities!

A Neotropic Cormorant is a bird I will not stop to observe at during my weekend treks at Tres Rios, where they numbers in the 100s as can the site species count on a good day, but it's another solid find for a little patch in central Phoenix.

So, finding the little birding patch by work helps not only to satisfy that birding addiction--and really, satisfy is a generous word--it helps to numb expectations and encourage an appreciation of what would be considered lesser or duller birds in more grandiose birding settings. And hey, who knows when something rare will turn up? In the mean time, for even 20 minutes on a Tuesday, being a few feet from a feeding Anna's will do just fine.