She scares me sometimes...

The last two days have had us on edge. A little moist air and temperatures in the 80s combined to cook up some thunderclouds, which could bring much-needed rain, dangerous wind gusts, fire-starting lightning, or all three. Yesterday as I worked in the garden, I watched a nice storm developing over the southern Sulphur Springs Valley. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, but - big surprise - no rain fell on our half acre.

Today we got the same setup, but I resolved not to get my hopes up even when it looked like a burly slate-gray thunderhead was moving our way. In between butt-numbing stints at the computer dealing with a couple of weeks' worth of e-mail backlog, I popped into the kitchen for a drink. From the living room I heard Jesse say, "It's sprinkling." I replied, "Yeah, right - it's sprinkling. No such luck, my dear." I returned to the computer for another half hour, until I noticed a lovely moist fragrance wafting into the study on the AC. Torn between skepticism and hope, I peeked outside and found the patio drying from a recent shower. Jesse was right - it had been sprinkling.

Jesse is a 19-year-old, captive-bred, hand-raised African Grey Parrot. Until today, I didn't even know that she'd added "It's sprinkling" to her already prodigious vocabulary. Her cage sits by a window overlooking the patio, where she could see the rain falling. Did she really understand what she was saying? I don't know, but she does things like this all the time. In our house, "bird-brained" is a compliment. One of these days, I'll take dictation from her and transcribe a few minutes' worth of her more intelligible utterances into her very own blog entry. --SW

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

Howls in the night

I wish I had the ability to record the sounds outside our window right now and share them with anyone reading this blog. We’ve been treated to a spectacular coyote chorus tonight much earlier than their usual midnight concert. One of the things I love about living on the edge of town is the diversity of wildlife that visits our yard and adjoining desert. Coyotes are among of my favorite animals and although I know that puts me in a minority, you have to admire any creature able to adapt and co-exist so well. Humans have been at war with coyotes for at least two hundred years and all that our shooting, poisoning, trapping and persecution has accomplished is to eliminate the stupid coyotes and encourage the smarter ones to breed more. We’ve bred super-coyotes that prospered as the less adaptable wolves were eliminated from most of their range. And then coyotes expanded their range to fill the void. Mexican Wolves used to roam these mountains but they have been gone from southeastern Arizona for quite a while. Some day I'd like to go up to northern Arizona where they have been restored (a much better term than re-introduced) to listen for wolves, but for now I'll have to content myself with the coyote chorus. What sounds like 25 coyotes outside the door is probably 3 or 4, enjoying the unseasonably warm nights and just being coyotes. It’s easy to see why many Native American cultures revered coyotes as “the trickster” Oddly, Josie, our border collie, shows no interest in the howling going on outside.

She does have an interest in some of our other visitors-javelina. If you think squirrels at a feeder are a nuisance, try these guys. I put out a quail block for our local Gambel’s Quail and the javelinas KNOCKED PICKETS OUT OF OUR FENCE to get inside to the sweet molasses-based block. After a couple of hours of hand–to-hoof combat (in the middle of the night), I gave up and heaved the quail block over the fence and went for my camera. Josie had a bad encounter with javelinas, totally innocent on her part. She dashed out the door one night after alerting me to the presence of the beasts on the porch. Before she could react, one gave her a nasty gash in her side that necessitated an emergency vet run and several weeks of comical Elizebethian collar-wearing for our Princess. She now alerts me whenever javelinas are on the porch and then quickly retreats to the bedroom when I go out to shoo them away. “Go get ‘em Dad, I’ll just stay in here”. Javelina are not really pigs, they are our North American peccaries but their flat snout and pungent odor seem very pig-like. Their presence reminds me were living in an interesting corner of the world but I wish they'd leave our garbage (and dog) alone.