Everyone's Favorite Highly-Adapted Micro Predator

It's been increasingly difficult to find good quality birding time in recent weekends. It's quite cruel that this always happens in late April and May, and to a much worse extent this year, because this time is also some of the best to be birding in Arizona. To make matters worse, I also tried to be sociable this weekend. It was always the plan to head down to Madera Canyon pre-dawn for some owling and then bird through the morning, and since I stayed up late (social moth instead of social butterfly?) it meant I pulled an all-nighter, something that hasn't happened since college. 

It was also overcast and rainy this weekend, something that causes birders and kite-enthusiasts to look towards the heavens in despair. 

It didn't seem like this would affect nocturnal birding, but it did limit the extent to which birds were calling and the extent to which I could hear them. The precipitation cleared by 4:45am or so, but that left only about 45 minutes in which to try and get visuals on the birds. Common Poorwill, Whiskered Screech Owl, and Mexican Whip-poor-will all registered, but I could not get visuals on any of them. 

That element was a disappointment, but for consolation here is a crushy Elf Owl to rub on one's face instead. I photographed this bird near its nesting cavity along the Salt River last Wednesday, and so it will now fall to the smallest owl in the world to compensate for the lack of all the other nocturnal birds. 

Here are a bunch of facts about Elf Owls. Some of them are true. Elf Owls are tied for the shortest Owl in the world, and are also the lightest, which makes them superlatively small. Elf Owls do not believe in Santa Claus. Elf Owls are super cute, but they are also voracious predators, with highly adaptive, highly sensitive vision and hearing that allows them to pinpoint prey in near pitch-black conditions. Elf Owls are known to enjoy the taste of human as well as horse flesh when it is seasonally available; thus the closure of Food City markets in Phoenix is a habitat loss concern. Elf Owls are in the minority that do not have ear tufts. Elf Owls think ear tufts are silly, and a clear compensation for something...err hem...Great-horned. 

Coincidentally or not, Elf Owls all ascribe to the adage, "It's not the size; it's how..."

Even though the nocturnal birding was less than fruitful this past weekend, there is still plenty to see and heard in the Santa Rita Mountains in the day, believe it or not. There'll be more from that trip coming later this week. Stay alive in the mean time; watch your back.

Bluffing Bandits and Foggy-headed Birding

Friday and Saturday were, once again, the setting for some pretty impressive deluges throughout the valley. This made Sunday, Superbowl Sunday, the only viable birding day this weekend. Bearing that in mind, and the fact that Glendale, AZ, was hosting the party, I decided to forego the temptation of chasing a Greater Pewee in west Phoenix. Greater Pewee is a great bird in Maricopa, especially in winter, especially in the lowlands where it was found. But between the weather and the traffic, I decided to chase on the east side of town and hitched my birding raft onto the Salt River. 

The Coon Bluff site is one of my favorites in Maricopa, combining interesting geology with some flowing water and a very healthy mesquite bosque. This habitat doesn't yield that many crazy rarities, but what birds it does have it has in abundance; they tend to be reliable, readily visible, and they tend to be awesome. Driving down to the river there was heavy fog settled in from the previous days' precipitation, and for the first hour or so my camera lens collected moisture enough to make it inoperable. As visibility improved, it revealed an eerie, primordial hollow that smelled wonderful. 

Coon Bluff is unofficially the Phainopepla capital of Arizona. They are, by far, the most numerous, vocal, and conspicuous bird around the bosque. For the most part, these birds are not overly friendly to photography, but with so many of them about the odds eventually pay off. The male below was perched eye level on the side of the road, of course before the fog was letting through much light. I have no good examples this time, but if you want to crush silky flycatchers, come to this place.

For sure, the Phainopeplas are a very impressive, abstract kind of cool, kinda like people that are very good at cooking oriental food or are very good at dancing to a specific kind of music. Another common aerial acrobat at Coon Bluff, the Vermilion Flycatcher, is a different kinda cool, like a trans-genre red corvette everyone acknowledges this bird is cool, kinda cool.



Then there is the Gray Flycatcher, the least eye-catching of these three. It tends to perch lower in the canopy and, in typical empid fashion, is pretty drab. But the simple fact that despite these proclivities they're willing to mix it up with their more aggressive and colorful neighbors is a testament to their fortitude. Since they make one work a little harder for the visual than the other two species, these tail-bobbing fiends have more mystique as well. I appreciate that they are willing to winter in the area. Waiting until spring for any empids would be nigh unbearable.

Do you ever go up to your perch in the morning for a nice preen and get the feeling, well, that someone is watching you? Someone robed in black, with red devil eyes and maniacal hair? This is but a day in the terrifying life of a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, and many other birds who must live near Phainopeplas. After all, those silky flycatchers nest in mistletoe; they do not respect personal space or boundaries.

Ladder-backed Woodpeckers do not have an expansive range, continentally speaking, and in some areas they're certainly more common than others (Coon Bluff being a common area), but in my experiences they are an extremely adaptable, hardy woodpecker with a very diversified lifestyle portfolio. I have seen them in mesquite bosque, cottonwood riparian, montane oak and pine, sagebrush, and even urban habitats. I suppose it's easy to move upward in the world when one comes equipped with one's own ladder.

I am mostly including this photo because I had not previously registered Brown Creeper at Coon Bluff. While we're at it though, check out the massive hallux on that guy.

Kingfisher activity is very good along the Salt River, which is also reliable for Mergansers and many species of duck nearer the Granite Reef dam. There was a Bald Eagle perched on the far shore, but these NECOs did not seem intimidated.

Coon Bluff has a few well known attractions. I was heading there to look for a Harris's Sparrow in the overgrown clearings amidst the bosque. This bird was discovered a week or so ago in a mixed flock. They're almost annual and this would only be a year bird, but I had no photos to date, plus it's a sweet sparrow.
This is not the attraction for everyone. Most hikers and naturalists in the area come for the semi-famous Coon Bluff "wild" horses (there's a heated, ongoing 'feral' vs' 'wild' debate). They like to graze in the area and, uh, hang out in the shade.

People in the area will often stop and ask if one has seen the horses--which are relatively easy compared to skulking sparrows. It coincided on Sunday that several of the creatures were lazing around the area where the HASP was last seen, which contributed a fair amount of extra vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Fair enough; they are pretty cool.

The HASP had fallen in with a group of White-crowned Sparrows and was being seen somewhat regularly, but this still meant sorting through a lot of different mixed flocks. You know that annoying thing when you're counting in your head and then someone interrupts you and you lose the number? It's kinda like that every time the different WCSP flocks kick up, mix around, settle down, and leave you scanning again from square one. 

Rummaging around in the morning yielded all of the nifty birds above and some other FOYs, but no rare sparrows. As the day wore on, I figured the HASP might have retreated farther from its usual haunt, given the extra commotion relating to the horses. As I headed further away, I ran into birder friend Gordon, who had seen the sparrow a bit earlier. With that bit of encouragement I continued away from the road, redirecting two more lost hikers who were hoping to find horses on the way.
As with the Sprague's Pipit the week before, it was crunch time with an 11:30am departure. I spotted a small flock of WCSP, mostly immature, and in their midst was the comparative demigod Harris's Sparrow. Another buzzer-beater!

Yes, there is horse scat in the foreground of all of these and many other photos. I'm pretty sure these horses fertilize most of the eastern Salt River valley, and now also my shoes and my left knee.

The HASP also continued the SPPI trend of leaving it late and providing poor looks at a great bird. These photos are not meritorious enough to enter the HASP fairly into the Butler's Birds Sparrow Judging contest, but some day perhaps he will make do what his WCSP companions never could, and take the crown.

Salt River Sights

Several weeks ago I met up with two Phoenix area wildlife photographers for some east side birding. In exchange for a delicious Chipotle lunch, I showed them around one of my favorite Salt River sites, Coon Bluff. The bluff itself is a great and famous place to observe perched Bald Eagles, and its lower reaches host all kinds of other cool birds, including Canyon and Rock Wrens, Lucy's Warbler, and Flycatchers in the surrounding bosque.

We first explored the Coon Bluff trail heading west of the parking area, which eventually dead-ends along the Bluff. We had excellent looks at the Eagles, and also a female Common Merganser, seen first out of the water--kind of a rare sighting. I didn't realize how goofy these birds look when photographed head-on, but the blurriness of the image aside this has to be one of the most unflattering photos ever taken of the species.

To be honest, she had weirdly dilated eyes and seemed to be pretty disengaged from her surroundings, like she was in a trance. Must've been drinking the salt water again...

There were plenty of Swallows flying around too, with Rough-wings being the most frequent perchers.

In addition to the always-suave Phainopeplas, Ash-throated Flycatchers, and Vermillion Flycatchers in the mesquite bosque east of the Coon Bluff Parking area, the highlight of the day came in observing a pair of Bald Eagles from across the river. With rolling hills of saguaros in the background, they happily perched, preened, and fed in a very raptor-oreinted cottonwood tree.

There are lots of Eagle nests along the Salt River (which should not themselves be directly/intentionally approached, both for ethical and legal reasons), but Coon Bluff has to be one of the better places to observe these patriotic raptors in Maricopa county. They fly up and down the river, but seem to pause and perch in this area the most, with little regard for lookyloos. Eagle Bluff may be a better name; I have never seen raccoons in the area.

With recent rains helping the keep the desert landscape a most charming green, now is a great time to visit the Salt River sites. Steve and Charlie had a great go of it, snagging some super images not only of the Eagles, but of the Flycatchers and Woodpeckers in the area too.

We didn't find or photograph the wild horses this time around, despite them being the biggest animals in the area, but I did get one of the smallest. And gnats all she wrote.

Call the Bluff

Out east of Phoenix there are several fantastic birding sites along the Salt River. The most well-known, and perhaps the all-round birdiest site, is Granite Reef, which is also the farthest west and provides a trail to the Granite Reef dam, where one can see concentrations of waterfowl a-plenty. But farther east are other attractions which, though comparatively lacking in their waterfowl, have really neat mesquite bosque and chaparral habitats that are absolutely teeming with birds during the right time of year. I swung by Blue Point earlier this winter for a fabulous Red-breasted Sapsucker, and weekend before last I hit up Coon Bluff after stopping by Red Mountain Park for some singing Bendire's Thrashers (see earlier post). 

The Coon Bluff site is stunning, especially as the wild grass shoots up and the scraggily trees bud out after a recent February downpour. That being said, I was a bit unlucky with my timing. When I arrived at the parking area ($6 Tonto National Forest permit required) I discovered the Phoenix metropolitan area boy scouts had planned a full scale, D-Day invasion of the place. I don't mean to sound grumpy, and in fact I was glad to see many people out enjoying the fabulous weather and scenery, I just had to move my birding site farther east than I would've preferred. Ultimately it worked out fine. 

I've been on a bit of a Flycatcher binge lately, and with a particular desire to find and photograph Gray Flycatchers I set out into the mesquite bosque looking for little dull empids. Inevitably, my attention was drawn to the larger, louder, more conspicuous and totally suave Phainopeplas. 

The mesquite trees host hemi-parasitic mistletoe which provide sustenance and lodging for the Phainopeplas. Find some ripe patches of mistletoe, and the treetops will be littered with these cool birds. There were acres of scrub where it seemed like every single tree had its own resident, chatty set of birds. Don't let their red eyes and silky aesthetic fool you. These birds are shameless gossips, as bad as Wrens or elderly neighborhood sodalities. 

The bird sightings tended to come in waves, with mixed flocks moving through and giving one a couple of minutes to try and pick out all the species before they'd inexorably and without apparent coordination, simultaneously move on in a random direction. As one would expect, there were plenty of White-crowned Sparrows and Yellow-rumped Warblers. Lark, Brewer's, and Vesper Sparrows also made it into the mix, while Say's Phoebes and Vermillion Flycatchers impressed with their overhead acrobatics. In the first few hours I picked out three or four Gray Flycatchers but was unable to get satisfactory photos of them. Normally this would be more vexing, but I was content in the knowledge that soon I'd be driving down south to greater concentrations, to strike into the very heart of the Gray Flycatcher nation in Patagonia. 

While out romping around and whooping it up, I also bumped into four British ladies (I didn't literally bump into them; that would've been awkward) who were exploring the bosque with lots of camera equipment and were in search of wild horses. I hadn't given the distant horse noises much thought until then, for when I heard the neighing and whinnying I assumed it was trail-riders and didn't think there was such a thing as wild horses in this area. I kept my personal misgivings private and directed them towards the noises and fresh droppings I noticed earlier that day. And yes, noticing droppings did make me feel like a real live naturalist. I didn't see the ladies again but hopefully they had some luck. I found three different groups of horses during the outing, none of which seemed particularly wild, other than that they were in a non-fenced area. One way or another, here's a cool attraction at Coon Bluff.

Eventually I progressed to the Salt River itself, which being rather thin and shallow at this point, did not host much in way of birds. A few pairs of Common Mergansers were squabbling farther west, and a lonely Great Blue Heron stood vigil at the banks. It's always kinda funny to find the water/riparian habitat to be less birdy than the surrounding desert, but that's the nature of how vegetation grows there.

I did have my FOY (first of year) Western Bluebirds at Coon Bluff, and some of the cottonwoods along the river did allow for better photo opportunities than I'd managed earlier in the day. They may be less iconic than the Eastern Bluebirds, but I gotta argue that the Westerns are prettier. In the right light (not pictured), their colors are positively electric.

The birding diversity at Coon Bluff isn't as high as at Granite Reef, but the openness of the site is very appealing, and since the two are only  few miles apart, stopping at both is the best way to go!