Birds n' Booze: A Classy Weekend in Southeast Arizona

By now everyone's heard of the birding attractions in Southeast Arizona. Every little mountain range has its own specialities and rare species, whether it's Mexican Chickadees and Hummingbirds or Spotted Owls and Montezuma Quail. Too often I launch into panegyrics on the region, and more than a few bird bloggers have filed for restraining orders against my continual ramblings about the place.

But most recently when I travelled down to the Sonoita area, on the southeastern foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains (home of the famous Florida and Madera Canyons), it wasn't with the birds in mind (ok, they're always in mind), but for the wine. 

Yes indeedy, with their predominantly spanish varietals, the Arizona wine circuit is booming, and some outstanding, award-winning wines are being produced down at the Callahan, Doz Cabezas, Sand Reckoner, and Lightning Ridge wineries. It was early February, and the plan was to stay in the area at a friend's house for the weekend and soak in the scenery, along with gallons of adult grape juice, before heading over to the famous Whitewater Draw near Willcox to observe the massive flocks of noisy Sandhill Cranes and the marshy entourage that can be found nearby. 

Before we made it to the vineyards or the Whitewater Draw, we made a stop and explored the oldest standing Spanish mission in America, founded in 1691a.d. at Tumacacori. 

Set against the gloomy winter skies that dominate southeastern Arizona in February, the mission was splendidly emanating with that irreplaceable aura of historical worth. Nonetheless, after about ten or fifteen minutes of sight-seeing, I was drawn back outside by the sounds of Sparrows and their ilk.

Chipping and Lark Sparrows were all around the grounds, while Mockingbirds and Phainopeplas dotted the craggy tree tops. The occasional Brewer's and Vesper Sparrow was mixed in with the bunch, along with some other cruelly ambiguous birds like this buffy first-year Chipping Sparrow, which dared me to call him Clay-colored. Nice try young Chipper, nice try...

There is substantial delight to be had simply in driving through the grassy, rolling hills of Sonoita and Patagonia, especially with overcast skies. The pasture fences are strewn with Lark Buntings and Red-tailed Hawks, while patient Harriers soar ever-present in the foreboding skies.

After visiting the old mission and some other fun sites in the Tumcacori area, we drove to the Sonoita wine circuit for an afternoon of semi-refined revelry.  We had a marvelous time visiting the Callahan and Dos Cabezas tasting rooms, hob-knobbing with winos and growers and generally doing our best to make Bacchus proud. Forgive the grainier phone photos. Saturday was overcast and the day for the Grapes; Sunday was the day for Birds.

There's nothing like right out of the barrel!

Unhappy weather was brooding in Arizona all weekend, and we were regularly rained on throughout our travels. This all made for an absolutely stunning drive out to the Whitewater Draw on Sunday morning, as the thick clouds just started to break up and let in the light. The golden plains were so saturated with color and the sky seemed to hold every hue of blue and then purple as the sun finally had its way and reasserted itself in the sky.

The Whitewater Draw, located about thirty minutes northeast of Bisbee and Douglas in the southeast corner of the state, is one of the state's most famous birding sites as it pulls in thousands of wintering Sandhill Cranes every year. As we were approaching the preserve we saw hundreds of skeins spreading out over the farm fields in search of fresh grazing grounds. We arrived at the Draw a bit too late for the grand dawn take off, but there were still plenty of chatty birds lingering in the shallow waters. From miles out the cacophony of honking Cranes echoed in our ears. The anxious, somewhat abrasive honk of the Crane is a very endearing sounds, one I regret not recording.

With the waters being pretty far removed from the pedestrian areas (that's half the appeal for the Cranes), the opportunities for up close viewing are pretty rare. Every once in a while though some Cranes would fly by close overhead, or off into a rainbow. There's got to be more than one pot of gold hidden out there.

While the Cranes are the main attraction, they're not the only birds on display. The tall marsh grass around the inundated lowlands is teeming with Sparrows, and smaller groups of Waterfowl also ply their trade in the shallows. Smaller birds like these Northern Pintails and Green-winged Teal cling to the underbellies of the Cranes and clean them of parasites. Scientists call it a symbiotic relationship.

 

As one might guess, the Draw is also bubbling with raucous Marsh Wrens. These birds are often a torment for photography, but with so many around the odds are finally in the photographer's favor. The Whitewater Draw allows one distant looks at huge birds, and up close views of tiny birds. 

Meadowlarks and Thrashers inhabit the surrounding Grasslands, and with a little bit of luck one might hear the trill or catch a glimpse of a Grasshopper Sparrow. While pausing to scrape some mud (there's plenty of that too after some rain), I even noticed a delightful ruddy little rump slouching down from a  

scraggily bush. The black spots were promising too. We had gone to the Draw simply to see and hear the Crane spectacle, and we would also be heading back to Phoenix loaded up with wine (Callahan Tempranillo and Back Lot 10'...mmmmmm). Now there was a potential Lifer bird here to ice the cake.

Ice the cake it did! Ok, it didn't actually ice a cake, but I did see it poop. A pair of Ruddy Ground Doves, though not overly splendid or charming in their appearance and demeanor, were arguably the highlight, and an unexpected one at that, of an already amazing trip.

With all the birding, scenery, and now fantastic vineyards, there are too many reason to be in southeast AZ. Why anyone lives anywhere else (myself included) is beyond me. Birding is fun, and then there's birding with wine fun...

Learning a Golden Lesson

Lots of adventurers and spelunkers and entrepreneurs struck out west in the mid and late 1800s in search of gold. This past week I made some trips northwest for a Golden-crowned Sparrow, a bird which I briefly saw on Monday, and then failed to relocate and photograph on Tuesday or Friday. In that sense, it was a good ol' fashion gold bust. It was great to see the bird in the first place but what a lamentable thing it is to have no photos at all. To those of you thinking, "Why not just go back once more?" I can only say this: you know not the great horror of driving into Sun City on Grand Avenue during rush hour. YOU KNOW NOT! Traffic on that scale, for that long, is something the human soul can only stand once or twice a month. Even the incorrigible Mockingbird balks at the prospect and repeated trips up and down Grand Ave.

"..Balk!"

While I couldn't strike gold again, I did enjoy plenty of other pretty, if also common birds around the Desert Springs as I ambled and ogled. Say's Phoebes had all the good perches and patches under surveillance, be they decapitated bushes or golf carts.

Realizing that searching in solitude was not fruitful, I enlisted a few young White-crowned Sparrows, like the fellow below, to help me find the longer, rarer Golden-crowned that was supposed to be hanging out with them. They were great sports about it, calling and feeding in as gregarious a manner as possible so as to attract any lonely vagrants in the area.

They even jumped up into the bushes to call out anybody that was hiding out below. It failed to produce a rarity, but did flush out a handsome Lincoln's Sparrow, 16th Sparrow of the United States.



As far as golf course ponds go, Desert Springs does pretty well. It had the predictable hordes of Coots and Wigeon, but also a half dozen Bufflehead and some Common Mergansers, which give a certain extra aesthetic and vindication to any artificial property that satisfies their needs.

Even over Sun City, in fact, especially over Sun City (which is a large retirement community), the sun still sets. As the glowing orb drooped in the sky and my Golden-crowned prospects similarly dropped towards zero, I was graced with a first-of-the-year White-winged Dove. Coming on February 26th, this was my earliest personal record for these birds, so at least there was something new to list.

Well, the Golden-crowned didn't get to see or photograph me again either, so he loses too! Right?...right?...right?

On the Boundaries of Civilization...

Last weekend saw another trip out west, not as far as Havasu and the whole different panoply of awesome birding that is to be had there, but to the barren, desolate intersection of the Salome Highway and Baseline Road out in Buckeye, also known as the Thrasher Spot (and, apparently, a great place to ditch old couches and other household items, despite the seeming inconvenience of driving them out and dumping them in the middle of nowhere).

This is one of my favorite 'within-an-hour-of-home' spots in Maricopa County, as it features some special birds not commonly found elsewhere in the state, it's a relatively small area, and it doesn't require that I look up into big trees. 

As this point in the year, the creosote and sage scrub hosts inordinate numbers of migrating Sage Thrashers, along with Sage Sparrows and the more elusive, more sought after Le Conte's and Crissal Thrasher. There are Bendire's Thrashers out there too, but oddly enough the region is too arid for the more common Curve-billed Thrashers found just about everywhere else. 

From behind, the Sage Thrasher can be easily confused with a Mockingbird, but once visible, the speckled breast is unmistakable, even at a distance. Plus, Phoenix-area Mockingbirds are too smart and spoiled to live out here in the boonies. 

Along with Sage, Bendire's are the most visible Thrashers at the site, as they're more comfortable and more inclined to perch high and sing even with the attention of people, and on this day there were even a few Audubon groups moseying out and about in the chaparral.



Crissal and Le Conte's usually stay low the the ground, but even so I've had excellent luck finding Le Conte's lately. About fifty or sixty yards west of the parking area along the Salmoe highway there is an old wash running north/south. Following this wash north to where it intersects with a line of old rotten fence posts yields an area that is frequented by the ghostly, vampiric-looking Le Conte's Thrasher.

Unfortunately I was unable to keep a bead on these crafty birds long enough to share them with a family trio of birders nearby, but soon after we all linked up with fellow birder, photographer, and tall person Gordon Karre, with whom we enjoyed the other birds in the area, including Gnatcatchers, Verdins, and the beautiful Sage Sparrows. As things started to simmer down at the Thrasher Spot we all made a caravan and checked out some of the Arlington area attractions, including a single Long-billed Curlew and some tardy Sandhill Cranes still lingering in the fields. 

As the Sandhill Cranes flew off and we parted ways, I decided to trade one extreme for another, and on the way back from the desiccated Thrasher spot and the bucolic Arlington pastures, I swung by the Crystal Gardens community on 107th avenue and the I-10. 

This master-planned community has a series of scenic ponds and pathways connecting the manicured neighborhoods, and these water features have hosted a number of attractive (and, for that matter, un- attractive) Geese this winter. Arizona birder and blogger extraordinaire Tommy DeBardeleben had recorded Greater White-fronted, Ross's, Snow, and Cackling (also, of course, Canada) all at these ponds, along with a single Tundra Swan, in early February. In mid-February I was able to find most of the birds but did not get satisfactory photos, in large part due to the limited amount of time I had to spend at the site. 

Returning now with new grit and determination, some of the dispersed Geese afforded very close and comparative views, like the Lesser and Greater subspecies of Canada Geese above. There were plenty of ornamented Canada in the cozy lakes, but finding a small and cackling goose proved difficult.

Diminutive individuals like this lesser Canada Goose exacerbated the problem, and ultimately I resigned myself to the probability that the Cackling Goose, which had gone missing from eBird reports for the last week, was likely moved out of the suburbs. Though charmingly smaller and quieter than the normal Canada Goose, the Lesser subspecies is still poor consolation.

The Cackling Goose thus remained a photo-nemesis, but the Ross's Geese seemed to have increased in number since my last visit. Even as I parked there were five flying overhead, and there were several more floating in some of the centrally located Crystal Garden Ponds. 

This is a species I'm used to picking out of dozens and dozens (at least) of Snow Geese. It was peculiar and pleasing to find this cute little Goose in groups of its own, with the hideously grinning and grating Snow Geese nowhere to be seen. 

Seagull Steve over in California argues that Ross's are the cutest Geese around town. After getting to spend some more time with these mild-mannered snowhites, I think he may be right.

Going from arid scrub desert to lush city parks was a nice, yin-yang kinda circle to the day. It combined uncommon resident birds with uncommon vagrants, and of course plenty of cool and common birds in between. It's hard to wander in any direction around Maricopa County and not to stumble across a great birding spot or two.

Back to Basics

The last several posts have featured either the frozen tundra that is Iowa in winter or some of the singular vagrants that have turned up around Phoenix this winter. Given the combination feelings of  cold and strange that those themes can bring, it's been nice lately to indulge in some of the warmer, more familiar places and faces around Phoenix. 

The Papago Ponds between Phoenix and Tempe host plenty of winterfowl, along with the year's first Swallows. The ponds aren't deep or wide enough to attract Goldeneye and Buffleheads, but for photographing Pintails, Wigeons, Ring-neckes, and even Canvasbacks, there's no place better. 

As far as waterfowl goes, these ducks are all pretty plebian. That doesn't mean they're not gorgeous.

I admit, on my weekend birding expeditions now I often skip over the waterfowl if I've seen them before. Time is precious and the winter months bring so many other attractions to in Arizona. Every now and again it is very nice to make a specific point simply of visiting again with these docile and beautiful birds, in no small thanks to the fact that, compared to vagrant Warblers ethereal Kites, they're really accommodating subjects for observation and photography.

In addition to the predictable and silly palm trees, there are lots of low-lying, now leafless scrub trees around the ponds, and these provide excellent viewing points for the expected desert birds. Some are boring, common, and even slightly deformed.

Some are still pretty common, like this Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, but are much more fun. These birds are already operating in couple throughout the Papago creosote patches. They don't mind people getting up close and personal, but they don't sit still either, so it's a fair trade. 

The short vegetation also provides welcome perches for Northern-rough Wing Swallows. While these Swallows won't win the 'Most Colorful Swallow' award, they do win the punctuality award in Phoenix for being the first Swallows back in town, usually by mid-February. 

The Papago mesquites are some of the best places to see these guys perch and preen. The namesake rough out coverts/shoulder on the bird's wings are even somewhat visible here.

 It's not often that a Swallow stops to take a break, but when the bugs are abundant and the weather is mild, there's no hurry. Sometimes I feel exhausted just watching them dip and dive all day (in fact, it's so exhausting, I've never even watched a Swallow all day); it must be nice for them to have a breather.

As one might expect of such ebullient aviators, they're also prodigious eaters. It's hard for scientists to estimate how many things these acrobatic Swallows kill and eat in their lifetime--far more than any Raptor or Tern--but at least from the small, flying insect perspective, this round fluffy head, with its vacant expression and stubby bill, is neither cute nor endearing, but is in fact the head of a mass murderer..bum...Bum...BUM!

Ivy League Birding: Princeton W.A.

It is a lesser known and celebrated fact that the prestigious Princeton College in New Jersey actually is named after a wildlife refuge in eastern Iowa. Of course, most things in the northeast are actually named after obscure midwestern wildlife refuges. This refuge, like the college, has some prestigious and fancy to-do birds. Also like Princeton (honestly, I have no idea) the atmosphere here was bitterly and bitingly cold. The riparian woodlands and the adjacent, off-shooting fingers of the Mississippi provided some flowing water and habitat for those brave wintering waterfowl and other perennial birds. Fanciest of all out sightings was this pair of Trumpeter Swans.

Equally conspicuous, though not due to its size or elegance, was this single Ross's Goose, who was doing its best to stay alive in the rough and tumble world of a Canada Goose Gang.

It is curious to ponder how this single Ross's ended up in this secluded area, without any other Geese of its type. We didn't even see any Snow Geese around. Was he trying to be clever in joining up with this gang, thinking they were one of the groups that would take him to the warm, lush golf courses of Arizona? Did he just get lost or left behind and fall in with the the biggest, loudest, most protecting flock he could find? Are all of the Canada Geese actually his adopted children? Any of these are possibilities.  

 

The woodlands arounds the Princeton water features did well in hosting the expected winter fare for the area. White-throated and American Tree Sparrows were abundant, despite the frigid wind. In fact, what came across as a frigid wind was probably a simple, cool breeze to the tough-as-nails Tree Sparrows.

Red-bellied Woodpeckers were also numerous, and we even got a lifer Red-headed for me, though it took off before it was possible to take any photos. Still, Red-bellied is a pretty good Woodpecker. It's like the finished version of the similarly but more conservatively capped Gila Woodpecker in the southwest.

We picked up a few Downy Woodpeckers as well, though this male was actually photographed at a different site. From this angle, the bird's head reminds me of a Star Wars stormtrooper, which reminds me that I reference Star Wars really often.

The Swans and Ross's Goose were nice finds and unusual for the area. We picked up some Horned Larks on the way out just to add some yellow to the day's color palette, and saw plenty of Kestrels and Red-tails perched along the drive home. So yes, no big deal but now I've birded my way through Princeton. I'll be expecting big grants and offers from the Cornell Ornithology School any day now...

New Birds in Old Places

These last few weeks I've been forcibly trying to bird more on workdays. After school, I usually have about an hour and a half of good daylight, and even though rush hour (it's not just an hour...) traffic is always a bother, I've been able to fit in some brief but good birding throughout these last few weeks. Often times I leave the camera in the car, in part because I often run out of the necessary time and light needed to pursue photos, and also because there's something refreshing about not having any of the anxieties that come with missing a good shot or making sure to come away with some good photos for one's trouble. 

As such, I've been able to get a lot more birding in this 2013 year and see a lot more birds sooner than I have before. I'd be lying if I said that seeing my name so low in the eBird species lists after January wasn't a substantial motivating factor, but of course the satisfaction and refreshment of birding is reward and motivation in and of itself. One of my recent destinations, which is fortunately nearby, was the Rio Salado/Salt River Audubon Center on Central Ave. 

For being only ten or fifteen minutes south of the downtown (Phoenix is weird like that), this Audubon center is very nice and sits on a pretty piece of property overlooking the Salt River. This site hosts the monthly Birds and Beer get-together and, equally fun, has also hosted a Pacific Wren and Eastern Phoebe this winter. The birds themselves hang out about a half-mile away from the center, down near the trickling water. I used to go birding here quite often before I moved farther away, as it was one of the best places to see Black-throated Grey Warblers and Green-tailed Towhees in Phoenix. 

In addition to the lessened proximity, another one of the reasons I had stopped birding near this center/along this portion of the Salt River was that it's totally trashed. I've had some unpleasant run-ins with vagrants down in the Salt River wash, and the riverbed is strewn with garbage. 

Traipsing through this materialist quagmire, I was constantly looking over my shoulder for a large, one-eyed squid monster to pop out and grab me. You know, like the one living in the garbage compactor in the Star Wars movie? The accumulated trash stretches for miles along the river. It's bad in part because there are seldom any organized cleanups  here and this is where the Salt River dumps everything out, from old frisbees to plastic bottles, car parts, and 1990s-style sneakers (which is also why there's less demand to clean here than where people actually go fishing and tubing farther east).

The area wasn't exceptionally birdy--I only had the usual Herons, along with Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped Warblers and Black Phoebes for company--but the whole trek paid off when I spotted a conspicuously white-breasted Phoebe in the willows about half a mile west of the central avenue overpass (in the river bed). 

The Eastern Phoebe, a rare but regular vagrant to Arizona in the winter months, only stayed visible for a few minutes before it flew farther west. I had a hard time following the bird as I was looking into the sun, which was also reflecting off the water to form a dual-effect solar blind. I felt like I had to thread the needle, shooting manually through all the willow twigs, but given how short a time I had with the bird it was a very satisfying sighting. It wasn't a lifer, but it was my first Eastern Phoebe in Arizona.

Heading back towards the Audubon center I heard the Pacific Wren vocalizing a Kinglet-like buzz call and saw the bird very briefly, but being low down in the wash and with the sun falling from the sky, and also this Wren's typical behavior, further photos weren't an option. A handsome Cooper's Hawk served as a great consolation sighting at the end of the walk, and I left the Rio Salado area feeling very glad to have revisited this quintessential desert riparian birding site. 

The Birds and Beer event is hosted every third Thursday of the month. I haven't been yet, but I had a celebratory Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA at home after this trip, and will try to make it for some hobnobbing next month.

Oh So Gullible

I wasn't specifically in Iowa for the birds last weekend, but as any other addict can attest...one manages to fit in some time all the same. Eastern Iowa isn't the birdiest of places in winter. It doesn't benefit (consistently) from the boreal winter species, the Crossbills, Redpolls, Northern Shrikes or Gallinaceous birds. It also loses most of its spring and summer residents, and this ultimately results in a fairly depauperated bird population until later March. 

With the terrestrial bird scene so desolate, the Mississippi River provides one large artery--a life line, if you will--for desperate winter birders. If one is willing to brave the cold and icy wind, there are plenty of Gulls and Waterfowl, along with scores of Bald Eagles, wherever there's still some flowing water. Herring and Ring-billed Gulls make up the vast majority of the Gull population, but Thayer's, Black-backed, and Iceland are also known to mingle in these big noisy groups. When our other birding leads grew cold, the Iowa Voice and I spent time trying to pick some rare individuals out. I do not think we saw any Iceland but we got at least one mature/adult Thayer's, of which I did not get any presentable photos. The shots below feature only Ring-billed and Herring Gulls, but do show some of the multifarious plumage messes with which unfortunate birders must deal. I know that with anything larus, I am very gullible...(that's right, I went there!)

My best bet at photographing a Thayer's Gull came with this immature bird. Adult Herring and Thayer's Gulls look very similar, and the immatures do too. Since I had very little experience to draw upon with Gulls, I had to defer to my Sibley's guide. The guide shows young Thayer's having mottled markings all up the base of the tail, like this bird, but also lighter secondaries and primaries on the wings.  The rump on this bird looked good for Thayer's, but that's a more variable characteristic and the wings indicated a Herring Gull, as was confirmed when I later conferred with some Gull Guys.

The immature Herring Gull below had the standard white rump shown in the Sibley's, and while I never held out hope that it was anything but a Herring, the synchronized pursuit of an opportunistic Ring-billed Gull made for an interesting encounter. 

As the rookie Herring Gull tried to get away with its catch, the Ring-billed matched it wing beat for wing beat, stroke for stroke, pressuring and harrying this greenhorn Gull to drop its lunch. These birds had pretty impressive, if also antagonistic, high-speed synchronization. It would make the Russian and Chinese Olympians envious for sure, and here they were showcasing along the frigid Mississippi. This scene could definitely have used some slow-motion video and a classical music soundtrack.

Above the Mississippi River and the nearby dam there was a massive, swirling cloud of screeching Gulls. Like a large, aggressive school of fish, they'd turn and fluctuate together, riding the currents and looking for any opportunity to feed. Soon after this Herring Gulls made its catch, both it and its pursuer disappeared back into the amorphous larus mass above and, so the extent of my knowledge, were never seen nor heard from again.

So I didn't come away with any conclusive Thayer's or Iceland photos to share, but there was some excitement on the river, more in fact than I was expecting in the inclement conditions.