Great Egret

The anatomical difference between herons, egrets, and bitterns is pretty negligible. Egrets tend to be whiter and have more plumage on their head and neck, while herons tend to be a little bit bulkier. The Great Egret is the largest of the egret group, reaching heights up to 40 inches. Its dagger-like bill is entirely yellow, as is its eye, while the legs and feet are a uniform black. They are locally common throughout the U.S., though they tend to avoid colder parts of the country.

Warbling Vireo

The Warbling Vireo is a small, moderately colorful bird with a whitish breast and a noticeable, streaked eye-ring. Denominations of Western Warbling Vireos are noticeably more yellow on their sides, not quite with the vibrancy of a warbler, but enough to catch the eye. They look and act a bit like a cross between a warbler and a verdin, maintaining a horizontal posture while in constant motion. The Warbling Vireo does not have any wingbars or speckling, which actually aids in its identification. This specimen was found at the Gilbert Water Ranch in Phoenix.

Least Sandpiper

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. Still, they're pretty cute little fluff balls. They venture into the Southern United States to winter, and spend their summers up North.

Spotted Sandpiper

The Spotted is the most common inland Sandpiper although their behavior doesn't otherwise set them apart from other Sandpipers. Aside from laying more eggs, I wonder what gives a species like this such an advantage over other similar species. There doesn't seem to be any clear superiority to the Spotted Sandpiper over the Least Sandpiper, but the Spotted has managed to spread its range over the entire North American continent nonetheless.
This lone Spotted Sandpiper (does that make him a Solitary Sandpiper? >haha birding joke<) is not in its breeding plumage and therefore is without the heavy spotting on its flank, but the yellow legs, size, white shoulder patch, white eye ring and slight yellow on the bill, as well as its presence in Phoenix, all still give it away.

Abert's Towhee

The Abert's Towhee isn't much to look at. Its high-pitch, single note call isn't much to hear. If asked, it would probably admit that its favorite color is grey.

It is fun to watch them hop back and forth, stirring up top soil and excavating edibles in a lively fashion, but it's appropriate they seem to prefer life on the ground and in the shadows. After all, they do have bandit masks.

Green-Tailed Towhee

The Green-Tailed is the smallest and slenderest of the Towhees, but it is also the most colorful. With an olive to yellow coloration on their wings and tails, a rufus cap, and a white throat complimenting the gray and white breast, they may also be one of the more colorful birds one will see flitting about on the ground. This purdy bird was at the Rio Salado Audobon Preserve in Central Phoenix.
I have also seen them in increasing numbers at the Desert Botanical Gardens (pictured at the bottom) as they concentrate their populations farther south for the winter.

Here he stands, lord of his domain

Something alerted him, and he jumped to the nearest vantage point with his rufus crest engaged.

This is my favorite picture. He looks so distressed, even sad, but the white throat, belly, and peachy sides are also clearly visible. these birds have a lot of color going on, and aren't afraid to show it.

 Note here the white lores, throat, and

Unfortunately I couldn't fit the bird in the frame here, but it still shows how intricately colored these birds are.

Roadrunnin'

In the famous old cartoon, an incompetent and startlingly emaciated Wile E. Coyote tests his destructibility while in pursuit of the quick and clever Roadrunner. While the Coyote casts a menacing, if ultimately harmless figure, the Roadrunner is a gentle, aloof creature who wants nothing more than to run fast and eat seeds along a saguaro-speckled highway.

Those cartoons were silly fun. Like many people, I even felt that after a while the Coyote really deserved to catch the Roadrunner. But thinkin on it now, it seems like in all the craziness of that show, the Roadrunner's characterization as gentle is perhaps the most unbelievable aspect.

I love Roadrunners. They're big, beautiful, iconic desert birds, and it's truly jaw-dropping every time I see them out and about, even though they're fairly common. They've got cool looking feet and are perhaps the only birds that come with built-in racing stripes! That being said, the Roadrunners I've observed around Arizona are themselves much more ruthless and determined predators than our scraggly coyotes.

Roadrunners are successful predators because they're not too picky. As any bird book will mention, they eat bugs, small reptiles, rodents, birds, and even fruit if they must. Normally I wouldn't think of a bird from the cuckoo family as a vicious killer, nor even a meat-eater for that matter. Now, imagining a Roadrunner eating bugs of lizards seems appropriate, even familiar. I've had the pleasure of observing exactly this sort of feeding behavior from time to time.

Here a male Roadrunner--identified as a male by the blue and orange in his eye stripe--proudly poses with his cold-blooded kill.

I associate certain bird groups as eating certain things. I read that familiar caption, "eats small rodents, birds..." and usually don't think much of it. For the longest time, it almost struck me as a sort of disclaimer, just in case one crazy Roadrunner breaks free from the bug & lizard racket to go after a mouse. I guess I never really believed it because I had never seen it. Hawks, Falcons, Owls...those are the birds that eat other birds, that eat mammals. They've got talons and hooked beaks; they're built for it. Lots of birds eat bugs, and plenty will go for reptiles if given the chance. Without any experience to the contrary, I had just lumped Roadrunners in that group as well.  Recently I was confronted with the blunt, graphic reality that Roadrunners really are thoroughly predacious birds, that they do catch warm blooded creatures, and that they'll tear them apart.

This Roadrunner, a stout beast-of-a-bird pushing twenty-four inches in length, caught what I believe to be a young House Finch along a perimeter fence at the Desert Botanical Gardens. It carried its quarry to a little sunny patch of dried palo verde needles, and then began to disassemble its meal.

The Roadrunner has neither gripping talons nor an exceptionally strong sharp beak. While pressing his long tail against the fence to sturdy himself, he thrashed his prey back and forth, back and forth, working the edibles loose until he could swallow them in manageable chunks.

Raptors can catch, kill, and eat their warm-blooded prey with efficiency and precision. Raptors are really good at what they do. While the Roadrunner is usually a graceful, dexterous creature, here it resorted to blunt force, to wild motion, as it tasted blood. He was determined, but unlike the raptors, seemed out of his element.

Roadrunner Rex was very focused on his grisly task and paid me little heed, even as I struggled to fit both the Roadrunner and the Finch into the frame. The feast was up close and and personal, shocking and transfixing to observe...

I don't really know how to explain it. There was just something so disordered about this scene, and not just because of the guts and gore. Looking at a Roadrunner's cool and unique anatomy, even knowing the expert analysis, it just doesn't seem like this kind of graduated predator...and yet here was the proof, staring me red in the face.

This is more the image I'm used to seeing: a composed, colorful bird with a keen eye for the next little meal that might scuttle across its path.

But there is another side to the Greater Roadrunner. This side is seldom seen, though not because of shyness. It's not the side of the Roadrunner that we see in Saturday morning cartoons or even in many quintessential Roadrunner photos.

I guess it's the same harsh realization we come to with many other wild animals. Just when we think they're tame, they rebel. Just when we think the Roadrunner will zig, it zags. In the end, I know no more about this intriguing bird or how to predict its behavior than Wile E. Coyote.

Turkey Vulture

A common and recognizable sight across North America, the Turkey Vulture is the dingy janitor of the bird world. Although nearly eagle-size, their body is a non-descript black built only to glide, with no real muscular capacity to exert much force or move incisively. However, the overlapping thick flesh on their heads does provide a protection against the bacteria they encounter while feeding on over-ripe carrion, which does give vultures a certain (ugliness) specialness of their own.

Owl Affairs

Over this past breeding season, Spring through Summer, a female Burrowing Owl nested and fledged eight young. Oddly enough, she did it with two nests. Odder still, one nest was in Arizona, while the other was over 1,100 miles away in Saskatchewan. This incredible behavior was reported in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology 2011 and posted on the American Birding Association blog last week.

This ambitious female was first found on 14 April during a study of Burrowing Owls in the Tucson area. While her first mate was visible guarding the entrance, the female was found inside incubating a single egg (seen with an infrared scope). Both owls were banded on April 27th, and a juvenile was detected on May 21st, but the female owl, who shall henceforth be referred to as Margaret, soon felt dissatisfied with her home life and up'n r-u-n-n-o-f-t. 

Margaret spent the month of June redefining and discovering herself--perhaps she learned to Eat, Pray, and Love while visiting third world countries--before she was rediscovered (by her band) in a pasture in southern Saskatchewan on July 12th. Not only had Margaret settled down again, she had rediscovered her maternal drive! With her new fung shui nest and new Canadian beaux, she fledged seven more young in the reinvigorating Northern climes.

It is not unheard of for owls to re-nest locally with other mates or other burrows, but the sheer distance involved in Margaret's affair has shook the world of behavioral studies to its core. Her Summer gallivant flies against the  governing assumption that (non-human) animals tend to expend the least possible energy, that is, move in the most efficient way, to actualize their survival and progenitorial instincts. Maybe Margaret was just fed up with the Arizona heat. Maybe her first mate wasn't virile enough. While one can wish Margaret the best with her new brood, one must also wonder about her first born. Will she visit that chick on the weekends? Will the male owl ever be able to love again, or is his trust forever shattered?

I've only ever seen the fairly common (and still incredibly cool) Great Horned Owl. I'd love to see and photograph a Burrowing owl in Arizona, or any other owl for that matter. I hope a few of them decide to stick around this year...

A Brief Hiatus

Hello Friends,

I won't be able to do much birding this week due to an increasingly busy schedule. However, I hope to make an excursion (or even 2!) this weekend, and will hopefully have some new and fun material to post. I think the weather may be temperate enough to venture an excursion at the Gilbert Water Ranch, and perhaps another visit to the DBG is in order. There is also a nearby, developing Audubon Center in Central Phoenix I'll have to check out one of these days. I have been learning/reading more and more about photography in this off-time, and am eagerly awaiting to return to the field. I must say though, ignorance can sometimes be bliss. Now that I know more, I don't feel satisfied with nearly any of my pictures. The decent ones aren't great, the bad ones are inexcusable, and the great ones could've been better.

See ya this weekend!
-Laurence