Anna's in the snow

A male Anna's visited our hummingbird feeder during this morning's mini-blizzard. He could barely hang on as the feeder swung in the wind and snow pelted his face. Not wanting to make his morning even more stressful, I waited until he left to put out fresh, warm sugar water.

It's been a grim winter for Arizona's hummingbirds. Many died in the Big Freeze of 2011, and many others had to be rescued. Hummingbirds in Tucson and Phoenix, where temperatures rarely stray below freezing, seemed more affected than those wintering at higher elevations. Here at 5000 feet in the foothills of the Mule Mountains, our two or three Violet-crowneds and handful of Anna's managed to ride out the January cold snap, but most disappeared after the all-time record low on the second night of the Big Freeze (0° F./-18° C.).

The following morning's weather was much improved, so I'm hoping that they rode out the worst and departed as soon as possible, as hummingbirds wintering in much colder climates have been observed to do. We're still hosting at least one female Anna's in addition to this male, but there's been no sign of a Violet-crowned since the first day of the freeze (at 8 a.m., during the second feeder change of the day). Even with a bustling clientele of Northern Cardinals, Pyrrhuloxias, Green-tailed Towhees, Gambel's Quail, and many more, the feeding station seems forlorn without an occasional flash of violet blue.

It will be weeks before I can tell how much of our hummingbird garden survived, but in the meantime I'll be escaping waaaay south of the border (Belize and Tikal) for a couple of weeks, leading a birding and natural history tour for SABO.

Panic at the playa

It was early afternoon in the southern Sulphur Springs Valley, and the last few hundred of Arizona's largest flock of Sandhill Cranes were returning to their roost at the playa lake at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area after breakfasting on waste grain in nearby farm fields.

Suddenly, chaos erupts as thousands of cranes take to the air in seconds!

Normal crane chatter rises to a deafening clatter as a multitude of voices raise the alarm.

What could have caused this mass hysteria?

The answer comes gliding through, slicing the panicked flock in two: A Golden Eagle, one of the few predators an adult crane has to worry about.

This scene plays out almost every winter day at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, one of the lesser-known jewels in Arizona's birding crown.

   

Desert snow

We woke up this morning to this:


After one of the worst "monsoons" on record and a virtually rainless fall, we'll take our precipitation any way we can get it. Melting, it registered .35" - not too bad.

It's the chickens' first snow, so I let them out to scratch around in it.

While supervising their explorations, I noticed that the hummingbird feeder was caked with snow. The feeder went dry while we were away for a few days, and I hadn't seen or heard a hummer since we returned, but I dutifully minced through the slush and brushed the ports clear. I hadn't taken three steps back when a male Anna's appeared out of nowhere.

Within a half hour a female Anna's and a Violet-crowned also came to drink, so I guess they've forgiven us for neglecting them while we were away watching other hummingbirds.

The chickens are only allowed out when we're there to supervise. We love our chickens, but we also love our raptor neighbors and don't want to lead them into temptation. We haven't noticed regular visits from the Cooper's Hawk that used our water feature as her personal spa the last two winters, but the local Red-tail is a proven bird hunter. One morning as I stepped out to check on the chickens, a flutter caught my eye. There was the Red-tail atop a nearby utility pole. Hey, neighbor, I thought. Another flutter, and a double-take: the hawk wasn't alone.

He can have all the pigeons he wants, and I've never caught him eyeing the girls, but better safe than sorry.

 

We're blushing!

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

Higher Moth

Bisbee has become famous (notorious?) for its counterculture New Year's celebrations (think Buffalo Bill's Wild West meets Burning Man), and 2008 was one of the best yet as pyrotechnic performance troupe Flam Chen wowed the crowds with some advanced moth-matics.

For Tom and me, the festivities began at the home of friends Aaron and Megan about 40 miles away in Sierra Vista, where time slipped away so fast that we didn't make it to Old Bisbee until just before midnight. The historic district was jammed with revelers, but we lucked out to find a recently vacated parking space a few blocks from the celebration. As we dashed up stairs and down alleys, we could see a cluster of huge white orbs rising over City Park and hear the joyful noise of the crowd backed by a primitive pulsing beat.

We arrived just after the stroke of midnight to a phantasmagorical vision: Floating above the park was a performer in a Luna Moth costume, bouyed into the night sky by helium-filled balloons. From her mask two brilliant blue eyes glowed, and tiny matching lights flickered along the curve of her wings. On the stage below, stilt walkers also dressed as moths (with ostrich-feather antennae) waved flare-tipped staffs and twirled flaming pots on chains, drawing ecstatic shrieks from the crowd. Words don't do justice to this other-worldly spectacle, but you can get a taste of the experience from this video shot and edited by Tom and posted to YouTube for your enjoyment:


What we didn't know until reading this morning's paper is that this was a pro bono performance. Flam Chen's fee for a slightly more elaborate "typical" show would have been $20,000, but they performed free of charge because troupe leaders Nadia (who portrayed the moth) and Paul Weir have enjoyed past New Year's celebrations in Bisbee. Costs were defrayed by a grant acquired by the Bisbee Arts Commission that financed the finale balloons and the helium that floated them.

So thanks, Flam Chen, for helping our little town ring in 2008 in wildly psychedelic style. We'll be counting the 365 days until Bisbee welcomes you back!

RAIN!

Last night it rained. Lightning strobed, drops spattered dusty windows, and Tom and I watched as the numbers crept upward on the electronic gauge mounted by the front door. It topped out at 0.12", twelve hundredths of an inch - barely enough to refill the small rain barrel, but we were grateful for every drop.

If you don't live in Arizona, the profound importance of this may elude you. We're in the grip of a devastating decade-long drought, and this is the first time since October that we've been able to measure and record rainfall in our yard in Bisbee. That's right - almost four months without measurable precipitation. Any green thing in our yard that doesn't have its own dripper line is in mortal peril. Even the prickly pear cacti are shriveled and limp. Last night's micro-storm would have been disappointing had we not been waiting so long, had the situation not been so dire. Instead, we celebrated. Standing outside in a February rain might not seem too wise, but it had been just too damned long since I'd felt drops of water on my face that didn't originate from a showerhead.

Living in the desert can and should change your view of the world and its resources, but too often it doesn't. Oblivious humans keep living like there was no tomorrow, building enormous houses, putting in lawns, swimming pools, and golf courses, using hoses instead of brooms on dusty driveways, and holding car washes to fund high school field trips. To sustain the unsustainable, vampire wells overtax fragile and finite aquifers, changing desert streams from ecosystems into drainage ditches.

I'm afraid that for the Arizona I love there really is no tomorrow. I wonder if a decade or two of devastating drought is what we need to motivate that change in world view, or at least to slow the rate of destruction, but this is just too horrible to contemplate. It's been hard enough already, especially watching birds more familiar to me than my human neighbors disappear from their haunts, their empty territories as mute and forlorn as abandoned houses. Rain can't wash away the devastation, but it can ease the burdens of those who have survived (for now). So let it rain...please. --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

Snow Goose "Lite"

The Ross's Goose is a diminiutive version of the Snow Goose - about a third smaller, with a dainty bill, proportionally shorter neck, and more rounded head. The little lost goose shown above, photographed January 2, 2005 during the St. David, AZ Christmas Bird Count, was dwarfed by the domestic Mallards it was slummming with. They're an abundant winter resident in parts of California, but being a refugee from the Ross's-poor Central Flyway I always get a thrill picking out the little guys in a flock of Snows. Just before sunset on the Elfrida Christmas Bird Count, I found a flock of 98 geese - 75 white Snows, one blue Snow, 21 Ross's, and a lonely-looking Greater White-fronted - chillin' with the Sandhill Cranes in a fallow field near Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area - not bad for a desert.

Christmas Bird Count - Quality over Quantity

A Christmas Bird Count is a great way to start the New Year. I've been doing at least one Christmas Bird Count for the last thirty years or so and they are some of my best Christmas memories. In Fort Worth, I did the same territory each year on the Nature Center I managed for 14 years. Although I could have practically stayed in bed and called in the results (after so long 90% of the count was predictable) it was that other 10% that got me out of bed before dawn and out each year.

The Elfrida count was held New Years Day and while the rest of the country nursed hangovers and watched football games, we had a beautiful 60 degree day with bright blue skies to watch birds. To maximize the diversity within mostly agricultural area count area, our 15 mile diameter circle includes the foothills of the Swisshelm Mountains in an area known as “The Granites”. Sheri and I decided to cover “The Granites” since it required a high clearance vehicle to access the area. We had never birded the area before and didn’t really know what to expect, but we had a great time. We did find some mountain birds (Rock Wren, Canyon Wren, Black-chinned Sparrow) to fill out the count list, but the list total is soon forgotten except by the numbers-crunchers that will analyze population trends. What I will remember of this count are the spectacular views, a small troop of coatis playing hide and seek in the rocks and the caterwauling of a bobcat in heat echoing off the canyon walls. The rock slabs are pockmarked with "bedrock mortars", deep depressions left by grinding stones used by Apaches and others to grind acorns for flour. It's easy to imagine a group of Apaches sitting on these rocks and talking as they worked to process the acorn harvest.

In the flats we found a family of Harris’ Hawks in hot pursuit of a jackrabbit. The five hawks had the frantic hare surrounded at one point but he managed to elude them eventually, showing that not all the broken field running on Sunday was on the football field. Harris Hawks are the only raptor that hunts cooperatively like a pack of wolves and are always a treat to find. We’ve been watching this clan for years and feel like they are old friends. A fine way to spend the holiday.