We're blushing!

Joe and Karen's Arizona Adventure:
February 20
February 21

Halloween memories

I promised to post a few photos from this year's Halloween celebration in Bisbee, and here they are.

It was quite a party. Brewery Gulch was the place to be, with a street dance benefit for a local charity in front of the Copper Queen Hotel, raucous festivities at St. Elmo's and the Stock Exchange Bar, and bizarre apparitions crowding the sidewalks.

Tom's costume got a few puzzled reactions, but most of the locals caught on right away ("Look at the horny toad!"). There were lots of compliments, particularly on his hand-crafted mask, but the best reaction of the night was from a woman who had done research on Flat-tailed Horned Lizards in California.The immobility of a mask is a challenge to character development, so I spiced things up with crouching posture, slinking walk, exaggerated head and hand movements, and eerie silence calculated to weird people out. The reactions were an interesting mix. Men seemed particularly uncomfortable with not knowing the gender of the person inside the costume, but a couple of women were thoroughly charmed by the froggie (a tipsy nerd girl even planted a smooch on my big green snout). The most disturbing comment was from a twenty-something guy who shouted, "Hey! What are you? I've never seen you in no movie!" I just gave my head a quizzical twist and gestured cryptically with my long red sleeves before slinking on up the street.

Late in the evening we ran into friends Liz and Jim. Liz made a great "Thriller" zombie, so it was a pity that the only Michael Jackson the street dance DJ played was "Billie Jean." Jim always manages to come up with a really creepy concept; this year his all-black ensemble with long coat. bowler hat, and face-concealing veil accented with a bone-pale sinuous walking stick brought to mind both Rene Magritte and the shadowy back streets of New Orleans.


The flip side of Jim's persona, hidden beneath a white lace-trimmed shroud, was leading the drum circle at Goar Park; Tom joined in on pickle bucket.


Next year, time and finances permitting, I promise that we'll do new costumes, maybe back to birds. Suggestions, anyone?

Happy Halloween!

Woo hoo! It's Bisbee's favorite holiday, when it's hard to tell who's in costume and who's just wearing their street clothes.

We missed celebrating Halloween last year because I was in Cape May, but we're going out tonight in a couple of our favorite costumes (right): The Horned Lizard King and Ambassador Krkktt. This photo is from these characters' inaugural year, 2001; I'll try to get a back photo of Tom's costume tonight to post as an addendum, because it rocks.

We each made our own mask in a workshop put on by a local art gallery. First we formed the basic shape in earthen clay then covered the form with plastic wrap and applied layer upon layer of cotton batting soaked in watered-down glue. After several days of drying, we painted them and added additional touches (dimensional fabric paint works great).

It's been several years since we've been that inspired, but on past Halloweens Tom's been the World's Largest Montezuma Quail (left), a Great Gray Owl, a Javelina, a gorilla tourist in Bermuda shorts and bucket hat, a musical spider (he played The Ballad of Spider John by Willis Allan Ramsey at the now defunct Quarter Moon Coffeehouse), and Tim the Enchanter (he won a costume contest with that one).

I've been a Druid priestess, green elf, and Mother Earth, but the last few years I've been bouncing back and forth between the frog alien pictured above and a Dia de los Muertos catrina, with skull makeup and a big black hat wreathed in red roses (very Dead). One year, a guy came up to me in the Stock Exchange Bar and said, "Your makeup's really realistic and I should know...I've seen a lot of skulls." (Uh, thank you kind sir?) In keeping with my costume, I abandoned my usual karaoke alter ego, Roberta Shrub, for "Güera Calavera" (roughly, "Blondie Skull").

So we're recycling costumes again this year, but maybe the spectacle of our Bisbee neighbors all decked out in their wonderfully creative finery will get us charged up for next Halloween.

Welcoming the Cranes

Despite the fact that my birding buddy was still working her way back from Cape May, I headed out to Whitewater Draw to welcome the cranes back to Arizona. Only a couple of weeks ago the skies were full of Swainson’s Hawks headed for Argentina. We saw over 200 one day and the next morning before the thermals began cooking it seemed like every fencepost and utility pole had a hawk awaiting liftoff.


This one was disappointed that he was not allowed to eat before leaving.

As the last of the Swainson’s Hawks (and Turkey Vultures) left, the first few cranes began arriving. I like to think that Siberian-hatched Sandhill Cranes share the same field with Argentine-bound Swainson’s Hawks for a few days in October each year.

At Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, all the usual suspects were there, including this Barn Owl peeking out from the willows.


I ran into the Wildlife Area manager and he said that there were about 9000 cranes at the roost earlier in the week, about a third of the total expected to arrive. I got to the viewing platform as the first groups began arriving in noisy squadrons from the corn fields where they spent the morning and sat quietly taking photographs. I probably have 2000 crane pictures but they are just too damn photogenic to resist. Actually, I’m still learning a new camera and enjoyed the practice. I can probably put all those boxes of slides in storage and just stick to digital images from now on.

The cranes were so close that along with the constant bugling of the adults and chirping of juveniles, I could hear the flapping of their big wings as they moved about the playa. Suddenly I heard a whoosh like a jet plane overhead and an entire flight of cranes dropped out of the sky as fast as gravity could pull them. I love watching them drop their legs and cup their wings to parachute in, but this was a panic drop down to the water.










So I glance directly overhead and there was the first Golden Eagle of the season, an immature bird hang over my (and the cranes’) head.


Winter in the Sulphur Springs Valley is a wonderful birding experience. Although I miss the hummingbirds and other tropical migrants that brighten our summers, the hawks, eagles, cranes and other birds make up for their absence.

Approval for Disapproving Rabbits

Our blogger buddy BirdChick's disapproving rabbits were touted in the "Weird Web" section of the latest Earthlink eLink newsletter! Maybe a few nonbirders that come for the bunnies will stay for the birdies.

Here, in honor of this new level of acclaim, is a disapproving lagomorph we encountered at a private home in southwestern Colombia, where we were teaching the field portion of a hummingbird banding workshop.

Back to blogging

It has been a month since my last blog, but as you can see, my editor has been ruthless. This is not as easy as I had hoped and it just reinforces my admiration for Julie Zickefoose, Bill of the Birds , BirdChick and Wildbird on the Fly and their daily updates. I used to think that indecision was my biggest problem, but now I just don't know. Maybe lack of discipline. It has been a busy month with lots of cool sightings so I'm back to cyberspace again.

Weekends find us in the Sulphur Springs Valley on "Hawk Stalks" and valley tours. Rural Arizona is a trip in itself.I grew up in west Texas and out there first you meet the goat, then you pet the goat.........
Oh yeah... birds. The sandhill cranes have been spectacular in the valley this year. With over 20,000 cranes at Whitewater Draw, 30 minutes from Bisbee, I feel like I need to be there as often as possible to soak it all in. They will be leaving in about a month and I miss them when they leave. The valley seems unnaturally quiet without their bugling. Some of our winter cranes have been tracked by radio transmitter from Whitewater Draw all the way to nesting grounds in Siberia.

We've had a couple of really nice groups lately, which always make the trip more enjoyable. The first was a group from Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix, a wonderful wildlife rehabilitation facility. These folks spend hundreds of hours volunteering their time to help injured birds of prey and it is really gratifying for us to show them wild, free, healthy raptors doing their jobs. We had Bald Eagles harassing the cranes both days and on Sunday watched two Golden Eagles lock talons and spiral towards the ground in a territorial dispute. Even the common birds can be exciting - we had Red-tailed Hawks of almost every imaginable color morph including a stunning dark morph that drew gasps of appreciation from the group. A couple of the Liberty folks are avid photographers with bazooka-sized lenses so I may be able to share some even better photos of the trip in a later post. We found owls all over the valley, over a dozen birds of three different species by the end of the day. A great weekend with a great bunch of folks.

The next weekend brought another full bus including a returnee from an earlier trip this year. We particularly enjoy birding with Tony because he's a fun guy and about as far from the stereotypical "little old lady in tennis shoes" birder as you can get. As "Tony Pointless", he is lead singer for an anarchist punk rock band (Rambo) that tours the world. He birds all along the way and points out birds to his bandmates. He's even listed as resident "ornithologist" on his band's website. He brought his father this week and we all had a great trip. That's Tony with the dreadlocks standing next to Sheri as they watch 3 Golden Eagles play on the wind. We broke our all-time owl record with 16 even though we didn't visit all our regulars. Many of the owls were paired off, sitting side by side, including a pair of Long-eared Owls at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area. Love is in the air. --TW