Salt Spray and Sea Breeze: Beach Birding on Break

This Spring Break was a long time coming. Many people anticipate this holiday and prepare for it with thematic shirts or tank-tops and large volume beer purchases. I'm not saying these things didn't also factor in, but definitely an escape from work and the general Phoenix scene were on the cards for Butler's truly. After some delays due to, yes, work, and other complications/restrictions, I departed for the coast on Wednesday, the same day or maybe a day before a gorgeous and chase-able Slate-throated Redstart showed up in Arizona. Best not to dwell on that...

I wasn't able to make stops for any of the SoCal desert resident birds nor spend time at the Salton Sea going to or fro, which leaves those less pleasant trips for when I'm rocking solo later this spring. Of course, birders want to cram as much birding into our travels as possible, but such considerations do not always resonate with a crowd that's contributing gas money and advocating more beach time. Fortunately, coastal birding brings its own rewards, and I found time to explore an estuary/inlet that brought salt marsh and seashore species together with a ripe, freshly-beached fish scent. 

Whimbrel was one of the first birds I spent time with along the estuarial mudflats. These kink-billed waders are very well-manufactured birds, with all of their highly-adpated parts and soft-spoken camouflage making for an easy life even during migration. These sightings were all the sweeter because Whimbrel was an overdue (and embarrassingly lacking) lifer, a bird with high vagrancy potential that nonetheless does not occur in Arizona very often. 

These praises and plaudits being established, one can tell that the wary Whimbrel has a chip on its shoulders, and this is largely because, despite their sturdy legs, lengthy proboscis, and economically stylish wardrobe, the Long-billed Curlew outshines them in all departments.   

Ah, the sicklebird, a behemoth of the shoreline and a prober of the deep muck untouched by any other. LBCUs are not simply the largest sandpipers in North America, they're also some of the most snazzy. They bully the Whimbrels around and the Whimbrels accede to the LBCU's superiority. If you had some dude get in your face, and he had a nose that was 3 feet long, you would too. These birds were migrants and they still gave all the other shorebirds the business; they were prickly, downright erinaceous. But this must not distract from the main thing about them, which is that they are gorgeous.

Even the disheveled and travel-weary bird shown above is inspiring on-the-wing..."and we petty men walk under its huge legs, and peep about."

Small to medium flocks of Curlew migrate through central Arizona fairly regularly, but unless one smacks into your car or gets stuck being a stick in the mud, it's pretty hard to compete with the sort of looks one gets in the more coastal settings. It was super calm.



The estuary was also populated with Black-bellied Plover and lesser peeps, though ammodramus Sparrows did not seem to be in the area. After making sure I had acrid mud well under my toenails, I proceeded out to the shoreline, which was pleasantly devoid of people and pleasantly populated with, you guessed it, birds.
Of course, the feeling of appreciation was not mutual. Red-breatsed Mergansers are always flighty and skiddish (which, incidentally, are also the two stages of life of a frisbee), and these shoreline Mergs remained true to form. They were not calm.



Most of the expected Gulls were around, including handsome Heermann's and California birds (so good that Utah adopted them right out of old folklore), but I got the impression that this strip of beach was not so frequently frequented by people, as these Gulls did not display the oft-observed tendency or either ignoring or pandering to me.




It's a shame. Phoenix duck ponds have spoiled me. I like being pandered to, like some sort of attention-seeking pander-bear, except with a more evolutionarily appropriate diet. HEGUs and CAGUs I was ready for, but a few smaller Gulls did cause some consternation. From the smaller pictures of Sibley came some textbook examples of adult non-breeding Bonaparte's Gulls--another bird and form of which I cannot boast familiarity (whereas, with Verdins, I can boast hella familiarity). The black tips and white coloration on the outer primaries and secondariness of the wings are sharp though, full credit.



More intriguing was a similarly-sized bird hanging with that same group. The black wing patterning was noticeably different, and the birdrenal gland started doing its thing when I recalled that first-year Black-legged Kittiwakes have the black beak and some sort of bold black pattern on the wings!



Alas, it was not to be. A quick consultation of The Tome confirmed that this bird, though in my opinion handsomer than its older brethren, is a first-winter Bonaparte's. Blarg. Well, if lifer Gull-forms count for anything, then I got a little piece of something. Eh, that bird has a weird lumpy double forehead anyway.

But Terns are pretty sweet, as this recent anthology by Seagull Steve reminded the blogosphere. Elegant Tern was a lifer for me last September, and even though their numbers around Half Moon Bay were significant, there was not a lot of quality time. This exiguous experience of the past was put to rest  by a more eximious Spring Break party time further south.

As anyone who has one or more eyes and isn't obstinate on principle can tell you, Terns are good flyers. They are good at it, and they look good while they're doing it. In fact, they're so good they don't even have to follow the usual convention of comfort and aerodynamics.
Nah, this Tern was probably just checking out a dead pile below it, which I in turn checked out as well, getting my only Pacific Loon photo of the trip. 

By happy coincidence another lifer from September, lucky #500 as it turned out, reacquainted itself on the young sand. At first I did not know what this Surfbird was doing. It looked agitated or uncomfortable but did not take flight. It seems like it's sitting on eggs right, but it's about 3,000 miles too far south to be doing such things.

The bird spread its wings and did some sort of half-push ups. As it seemed to be injured, I sat and observed without further approach for a couple of minutes, which affected nothing, and then approached directly to see if I could help the bird. At this point it took off immediately, seemingly without issue except for a dangling leg. Best of luck with the remaining journey Surfbird.

In case you're wondering, the Slate-throated Redstart disappeared before I returned, so the sunburn- having-been-avoided only soothed so much. On the upswing, there should be some nice-looking Warblers arriving in the higher climes of Maricopa County now, and many birders are starting to pitch tents even earlier in the morning in anticipation of That Great Spring Movement.

Oh, just a Pokey Polkin' around kinda Post

After last weekend's excessivley eventful birding, I have little to show either in comparison or really even in its own right. With a lot of help from birding protege Caleb Strand, I finally saw a Varied Thrush this past weekend. This almost-nemesis (one can't really call a bird that's only a vagrant in your state a nemesis) was equal parts gorgeous and obscured, boldly colored and shyly behaved. Neither of us captured images of this bird in its dense Hassayampa haunt, which means I'm opening up the sock drawer now. But, slightly more interesting than looking at my socks (or not, depending on what you're into) will be looking at these birds picked up from poking around east Phoenix parks. 

Before that, here are a couple of pictures from the Hassayampa Preserve where we had this VATH. This is one of the best birding sites in Maricopa, respective of good riparian habitat and vagrant potential (more than potential; this place is always turning up great vagrants). Despite all of this, I still tend to have mediocre luck here, and it bugs me to no end. Hassayampa is also the only area in Maricopa that consistently hosts breeding Gray and Red-shouldered Hawks with Lawrence's Goldfinches. Here's some crumby photo evidence of the middle one.

Additionally, here's a goofy Black Phoebe with a messed up eye. The number of out-of-state birders who email me for information on where to best see this bird is...slightly cringe-worthy.

This weird winter has been good for vagrant Warblers in central Arizona, so during this past week I used the odds and ends of spare time on various afternoons to check out some of the urban sites where cottonwoods and/or pines were growing near a bit of water. Most of the better, well-known spots around Phoenix were already getting good coverage, so I decided to check out a park for which I have seen no eBird reports. There's a big clump of trees--pine and bottle mostly--across the canal from the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. Every now and again I'd wonder what was over there, and so with a little downtime one afternoon I finally checked it out. It was pretty bland, but it hey it had more birds than my living room. Killdeer in the parking lot? Good sign. It's an increasingly known fact that ideal Killdeer nesting grounds are concrete, asphalt, or gravel plains near heavy automobile or pedestrian traffic. No doubt this bird will be plopping out eggs soon. 

The impressively-foliaged park I had often glimpsed from across the DBG/Papago Park canal is called the Pera Club, which it turns out is a private park for employees of the SRP power company conglomerate. It has free admission and is very well kept, with stands of elm, aleppo and afghan pine, and mesquite providing decent birding potential. Recently, Nate McGowan found a nesting Anna's Hummingbird in an aleppo pine in my apartment complex. I found another at Pera, and this was mid-February. Kids are growing up way too fast these days. 

Park birding is not a very pure nor very productive enterprise, but it has its appeals. For those who like listing and growing their patches, it makes common birds appealing and exciting again--like the many dozens of Quail and Brown-headed Cowbirds found at Pera. I also tend to turn up weird stuff at these parks, which attract hobos of both the homo sapien and avian world. Non-countable, abandoned or escaped birds like Budgerigar, or this Cockatiel from Encanto a few years back, can make for an interesting visit to such urban oasis. This time at Pera, it was some subspecies of Vampiric Siberian-collared Wedding Dove that made for an awkward spectacle. 

       

I watched this bird wander around the grassy areas and crash into a chain-link fence while flying. It may be bright in plumage, but it wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Given the healthy population of Red-tail Hawks in the area, I doubt it will be around much longer. 

For an invasive/introduced species to be eaten by a native predator, at least, seems the best way to go. 

From observations past I know at least one pair of Red-tails nest at this park. As a young lad, I often watched them copulate from across the canal at the DBG, curious and ready to learn about the world the bees as well. More relevantly here, this bird seems to have the bottom half of a Round-tailed Ground Squirrel, which is the second best half of such a squirrel to have.

With Pera failing to turn up any warblers (excusing YRWA), I swung by Tempe Marsh off the Tempe Town Lake, an area always good for waterfowl and the occasional passerine-of-interest (POI) in the riparian thicket. The cottonwood/tamarisk groves did not look healthy, and some construction in the area limited access to the Salt River ("Tempe Town Lake") for persons without wings. 

So I was resigned to scanning from a distance with inadequate equipment for such a task. All the same, groups of Cormorants, waders, and Mergansers, plus the afore-shown Bald Eagle, made for an eventful winding down of the afternoon, before such pesky things and laundry and prepping for Monday returned to the fore. As a (possible) recent highlight, the birds below might run as candidates for Red-breatsed Merganser (not that such things should be voted on), with the lengthy crest and lack of contrasting white on the flanks and wings/scapulars. It's always good to have something bothersome, just a bit unsettling, to keep you frosty through the week.