Who Needs the Ballet?

As promised, this past weekend was pretty rainy in central Phoenix, and when it wasn't rainy it was still pretty damn gloomy (which will be the case this weekend too). In combination with other business, this was enough of a deterrent for dedicated birding and exploring time through Sunday, but by Monday morning I could no longer resist the Call of the Wild, or of the Almost Wild, or of the Maybe Wild...or of the Definitely Not Wild.

Sunrise is usually good after a storm, even if there was still thick fog in the valley. RTHAs dig it.

Mopey weather given, western Maricopa has been host for the last few weeks to 3 swan species (couldn't turn up that Black Swan, alas), and questions of provenance aside the possibility of logging a '3 Swan Day' was too enticing to pass up.
It may not sound like an obvious migrant trap, but it seems every couple of years the alfalfa fields in the Buckeye/Jackrabbit area of western Phoenix hold one or more wayward Swans. A couple years ago it was a half-dozen Tundra, and this time around a lone Trumpeter decided that here would be as good a place as any to spend the winter.

Lamentably the bird was very far from public roads. Some birders have had luck asking for better access from the hay business in the area, but no dice on MLK Day. TRSW is a great county bird, even if this sighting was sort of better on paper than in practice. Of course, once one gets a taste for Swan--even from range--one is not easily sated.

The Deer Valley golf course, which runs through subdivisions in Sun City West (one of my very least favorite places in Arizona) has a perennial and pinioned population of Mute Swans patrolling its various water features. More excitingly, these birds were joined by a lone Tundra Swan first spotted in December.

Brontosaurus have since been, I recall, adjudicated never to have existed. Maybe the fellow who misconstrued his fossils originally had Mute Swans in mind?

To the extent anything with a large leathery testicle on its forehead can be elegant...these birds are pretty elegant.*Author's note the number of people who report these MUSWs on eBird as "Continuing rarities" is disconcerting.

Scanning the first several ponds where the most recent eBird reports placed TUSW was unsuccessful. The object bird did like to hang around with one or more Mutes (they're good listeners), but there were also Mutes that did not have this noteworthy accompaniment. One such pond did have a noteworthy Vermilion Flycatcher, noteworthy only because, well, it's a Vermilion Flycatcher.

It is widely accepted as impossible to properly photograph/expose this bird in overcast lighting. The color is too saturated at all times.

After dipping on the first 5 of 7 possible ponds I was feeling about as glum as the weather, but the last pair hit pay dirt. Behold this semi-tragic portrait of pinioned (crippled) Mute Swans, the lost Tundra, oblivious CAGOs, disparate lawn colors, and quintessential golf cart in the background. I guess it still beats landfill birding.

More so than other classes, vagrant waterfowl must pass the barometer provenance test. This bird is not a long-time or yearly resident (according to the long-time yearly residents), has all of its flight feathers (and has been witnessed flying), and is not missing any toes. Furthermore, TUSWs do winter somewhat regularly in Prescott, which is only about an hour north. That is negligible straying.

                     

Naturally, if this bird hangs around after spring the provenance question may be opened again. But who could say he/she isn't just staying out of loyalty to the flightless Mute comrades trapped in Sun City, where the grass is well aged?

What nice halluxes you have, Tundra Swan.

Fun fact I read about TUSWs, the symbol of measured passion and love; they pair up for a year before breeding, taking it slow and getting to know. Lewis and Clark dubbed them "Whistling Swans" due to the sound of their wing-beats, but Prudent Swan would also suffice. 

P.S. Here's another Burrowing Owl shot. It was stored on my camera. I do not know when or where I took it, which is unusual. The ubiquitous setting of the shot is thus reflective of the ubiquity of Burrowers out in the agg. fields of west Maricopa--not that I'm complaining.  

Soaring Over Arlington

Last weekend I drove out west to Arlington and its agriculture fields in search of Kites, Ferruginous Hawks, and Long-billed Curlew. I didn't get any photos of the Ferruginous Hawks and didn't even see the other two targets, but it was still a nice spot for some safari (from-the-car) birding. I also ran into a fellow who tipped me off on a place to observe nesting Common Black Hawks and Zone-tailed Hawks in later March, so I'll just look at this trip as a long-term investment for future good birding. The Arlington fields were not without their own birds either. It seemed like Kestrels dotted every telephone pole, and there were various raptors constantly flying overhead. 

I ran into this same Bald Eagle multiple times throughout the day. He liked to perch on the telephone polls (who doesn't!?), but would also always spook every time a car drove by. His must be a life full of angst. The Arlington fields also afforded some nice Harrier views, including the less common, or at least less conspicuous, silver-backed male.

This immature Red-tailed Hawk was about the only bird that stayed perched while I drove by it. He's no silvery Northern Harrier, but I appreciate the good-faith gesture on his part nonetheless.

But watching birds take flight from posts was definitely the theme of the day. Adding in Belted Kingfisher, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, Snowy Egret along the canals, and Meadowlarks on all the fences...I must've seen a good dozen species at least take off of fence posts or poles. It was remarkable thematic coordination on behalf of the avian world. Even the Red-tail didn't stay still for long.

It never feels good to flush birds. It makes one feel clumsy and unpopular...high school all over again. But these birds would all perch by the roadside and then spook as soon as anybody drove by, often flushing from other traffic before I'd get anywhere near. So, in short, they weren't making it easy for themselves either. 

Little did we know that, when we'd make 'V' or 'M' shapes to signify birds in our little kid drawings, we were actually always drawing Osprey. 

To be fair, not all of the birds were chickens. When you could pick the Horned Larks out along the gravel embankments (which was easy when they were facing you), they were pretty accommodating. It's funny to have these birds down here in Phoenix, enjoying the 55 degree weather, and also seeing pictures of them foraging in below-freezing weather in the Midwest. Hey, with mustaches like that, is there any doubt they're tough?



While trolling for Kites and Curlews--an ultimately futile task--I did see some other unlikely farmhands.
Six large white figures foraged with the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in the background. Maybe they were spying for the Russians.

Despite their namesake, these Swans must have been sick of eating hard, frozen Tundra grass. They've been hanging out in Arlington for several weeks at least, and seem very content in the plentiful alfalfa fields. Tundra Swans turn up in the chillier northern parts of Arizona, but west Phoenix is not a place I figured I would ever see wild Swans. This is what must have used up my Curlew luck.

As was pointed out by Seagull Steve in the comments below, and also pondered upon by others, second Swan from the right seems large and bigger-billed than the others. Not to blow the Trumpet too soon, but here are a few more heavily cropped shots.

It wasn't a resounding success, but it was a good bout of birding, and next time I go out to the Le Conte's Thrasher spot, about ten miles farther west, I can comfortably detour through Arlington to photograph some big birds and telephone poles on the way home. It's always good to add another site to one's repertoire.

Beware Delaware, but Get Hooked on Bombay

I must warn of two things up front. Firstly, this post is, alas, not going to be a tale of addition and fancy Indian gins. Secondly, this is going to be really lengthy. 

During a winter visit to Pennsylvania, I found myself with a free day to move farther afield than the local haunts around, so I fortified and forayed out into the cold towards larger and more famous hot spots. I had no Fellowship, and I had no ring-generated invisibility powers, but nonetheless I set off to a place as terrifying to travel through as Mordor in the summer...Delaware!!!

About an hour and a half south of West Chester is the Bombay Hook Wildlife refuge, a large nature preserve with salt marshes, lagoons, woodlands, and farmland all coming together to form a very diverse and birdy landscape. Admittedly, this is a place better visited in the later Spring, but it still provided some of the winter sparrows and eastern waterfowl that I'd been missing in the southwest. I didn't know it at the time, but I had also apparently been missing the bitter, driving coldness that comes with these sorts of birds. 

In order to get there, I had to first drive through many miles of single-lane "highway" laced with stoplights and stop signs and speed traps and those large carnivorous flowers from the Mario games. It was an ordeal, to be sure, and the fact that often times in order to stay on one of the older "highways" in Delaware one must actually exit and join with a parallel road, or it'll turn into something else. Anyway, the travails of travel aside, Bombay Hook was the vast birding expanse it promised to be, a combination of habitats none of which are substantively found in Arizona.

The preserve is huge and you are expected to proceed through it in a sort of safari loop not unlike the jeep tour in the first Jurassic Park movie, except none of the animals here are enclosed, so it's even more dangerous. The perimeter of the park is old cottonwood and oak woodlands. These craggy trees host all kinds of noisy songbirds, including some of the little brown jobs I was particularly seeking while in PA.

This Swamp Sparrow was kind enough to come up and out into the open for a moment so we could take a commemorative photo.

This red morph Fox Sparrow was not. 

It was also nice to be birding in a place where the ranges of the similar Carolina and Black-capped Chickadees do not overlap. Although the Chickadees aren't as approachable on a nature preserve as they are in the backyard, it was nice to have unambiguous identifications of the Carolina variety.

These old, leafless woodlands would be well-described as sleepy, except that all the Sparrows and Wrens and Chickadees kept up such a cacophonous racket that napping was quite impossible (and, given how chilly it was outside, potentially deadly). In concert with the noisy songbirds were all kinds of headbangers. Pileated Woodpeckers were easily the coolest (too cool for a photo), but Red-bellied Woodpeckers were another great attraction in the old growth forests.

The woodland perimeter is itself surrounded by fallow farmland that hosted Blackbird/Cowbird flocks along with Snow Geese, but this area was best observed through a scope. This massive conspiracy of Crows was large enough to be observed and feared with the naked eye. Hitchcock would be proud.



The interior of the preserve features the tall grass and twisting rivulets inherent to salt marshes, and this was really the big attraction. I had the vain hope of seeing a Nelson's Sparrow in the tidal reeds, and while I did not really expect to find that secretive bird, I knew that I'd see lots of cool stuff in the process. It's difficult to get anywhere near Bufflehead in Phoenix, but while I was trying to photograph a Northern Harrier flying over the dense grasses, a lovely male came floating by parallel to the road without any pomp or fanfare.

Some of the channels come together through the preserve to form larger reservoirs, and these reservoirs in turn have sandbars and islands that support larger birds. In addition to the Tundra Swans pictured earlier, Canada Geese congregated by the hundreds, while the occasional Great Black-backed Gull tried unsuccessfully to blend in with them. 

 

I drove slowly down the dirt road, frequently stopping to binocularize and photograph the marshy species on display. After one such stop, I looked down out my window to see this Savannah Sparrow staring up with frozen terror. I felt bad for the little guy. It was like the sight of this gangly monster protruding from the truck and made him forget how to fly away. It is also possible he was just playing opossum. A third possibility is that he was just trying to remember if he had left the stove on at home. I feel like we've all paused and made this face at one time or another. 

The Savannah Sparrows were pretty common along the road, and it also became clear that they were pretty accustomed to the vehicles. This bird below was hopping amongst these anti-topsoil-erosion rocks, foraging without a care in the world. He definitely got his foot stuck between two stones for like fifteen seconds. He feebly flapped for a second, noticed I was watching, and then just decided to sit still until I was no longer witnessing his great shame. I shifted my attention to other things and, upon a second inspection, the clumsy sparrow was gone. 

The salt marsh portion of the preserve is set up such that on either side of the dirt road there are short, grassy slopes and then thinned riparian vegetation sprouting up before the man-made estuaries that serve to both feed the larger ponds and keep people from approaching any unwilling birds too closely. Nothing likes these thin reedy habitats, or goes better with Bombay Gin, than Bitter(n)s.

I saw three of these eminently awkward and super cool birds along the Bombay Hook drive. Even though they were not new birds for me, unlike the American Black Ducks and Tundra Swans and Fox Sparrows, they were probably the coolest sighting of the excursion, and they're none too common in Arizona either.

Look at this stud of a bird. It's back looks like marble and mahogany all in one. Add to that aesthetic this bird's lightning-fast reflexes, super sharp beak, and disposition similar to that of a stick (but you know, a really cool stick), and you've got a real winner.

The one disappointment of the Bombay Hook, other than the terminally icy and face-chapping breeze, was that I could not actually get coastline access. I had really been hoping the salt marsh road would open up to a full coastal view, but alas. You never know what'll turn up at the beach, and last time I birded on the Jersey shore (Barnegat Bay mind you) it was fantastic. I did some extra driving down past the preserve and made it out to the Atlantic via a small sandy road, but it only opened to a little boat launch and a grumpy gang of stumpy Ring-billed Gulls.

So there weren't any coastal or pelagic birds on this trip then, but I can now say I've taken a shot of Bombay in Delaware, lived to tell the tale, and even come home with a few more life birds. I will definitely try to get back there in the summer.