What a surprise to arrive at one of our bird monitoring sites overlooking Old Bisbee this morning and be greeted by a chirping troop of White-nosed Coatis! These diurnal, social members of the raccoon family recently recovered from a local population crash, so it's particularly nice to see five healthy-looking "teenagers" with five adult females.Alternate names include coatimundi (co-AH-tee-MUHN-dee, "mundi" referring to the solitary habits of adult males), tejon solo ("lone badger"), pisote, chulo, chulo bear, and chulo monkey. When you see "monkey" in an Arizona place name, it probably refers to these guys.
Lesser Goldfinches are one of those those birds whose voices are so delicate that even their harshest calls lay as sweetly on the ear as a song. More sweetly than their own songs, in fact, since these consist largely of other birds' calls. One of our neighborhood males sings rapid-fire songs that consist mainly of flycatcher calls: Ash-throated, Brown-crested, Vermilion, Say's Phoebe, Cassin's Kingbird, Western Kingbird, Western Wood-Pewee
. A male that lives in Miller Canyon does a great impression of the "rubber duck" call of the Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher. The phrases go by so fast that the bird may be four or five species further along by the time you can say, "Hey, wasn't that a...?" --SW
When you see one of these, what do you say?
