Sunday Morning Birding

For the first time in a long while I got up early to do some birding this morning. I hadn't done much birding at all over the last couple months. I guess I was just getting a little tired of seeing the same winter residents every time I went out. But with spring in full bloom, the new migrants are adding splashes of brilliant color to the vibrant greens of the new leaves.

Probably the most vivid of all our summer birds is the Vermilion Flycatcher. Even though we've got a pair who nest only 100 yards from our front door it still took Sonja half the summer last year to finally see one of these. As brilliant as they sometimes are, sometimes even the most conspicuous of birds can be rather inconspicuous.

Another recent arrival is the Bullock's Oriole. We actually have three oriole species that nest in the park, but I have yet to see the other two this season (Scott's and Hooded Orioles).

I spent the better part of two hours in the picnic area just down the road from our house. There was definitely plenty of activity there to keep me busy the whole time. Once I got home I was still so jazzed that I convinced Sonja to drive to the Page Springs Fish Hatchery to try to find a Zone-tailed Hawk that was spotted there yesterday.

No luck on the zone-tail, but this Common Blackhawk made an appearance.

And then promptly disappeared, again.

Even though Yellow-rumped Warblers stick around for most of the winter, they're still a fun bird to watch.

One of the highlights was seeing our first copulating pinacate beetles of the season. In the next couple of weeks pairs of these large black beetles will be piggy-backing all over the roads and sidewalks.

And the whiptails have finally emerged from their hibernation, too. The tree lizards have been out for a few weeks, but today marks the first time we've spotted the whiptails in any numbers.

So, I've had requests to post more pictures from the Renslow's trip down here, as well as some of the special evening program we had at Montezuma Castle. I'll get to that eventually.

Ambush

After giving Harvey a bath this afternoon I was out on our front sidewalk trying to coax a very uncooperative velvet ant into a good pose for a picture (those little buggers never sit still!). While I was crouched in the dead grass fighting with the macro feature on our camera I heard a sound like a model rocket wooshing over my head. I looked up in time to see a grey blur zooming toward our bird feeders. In a flurry of tiny feathers, the thirty juncos that had been gorging themselves on sunflower seeds vanished. On a stump in the midst of the abandoned feast sat a very disappointed Cooper's Hawk.

She gazed around the now empty yard checking for stragglers and found none. And with a shrug (I swear I heard a sigh), she leapt into the air to perch on a large cottonwood behind our house and compose herself. I had forgotten there was a camera in my hand.

After several frantic seconds trying to switch it off of the macro setting, I brought the camera to my eye and started shooting. I was just in time to see her take off and begin an elegant soaring flight directly overhead.






As I was taking these pictures I noticed she wasn't alone. Suddenly there were a pair of Cooper's Hawks soaring overhead. At that precise moment I somehow I managed to switch the camera back into macro mode, where it promptly got stuck. Another thirty seconds spent fighting with the lens meant that when I finally did get it focused on the sky again, the second hawk was gone. I had completely missed an opportunity to capture two soaring Cooper's Hawks together. Or so I thought, until I downloaded the pictures a few minutes later.

Just looking at these birds I wouldn't think the juncos stand a chance.

An Unexpected Lifer

Tuesday morning, after spending that hour down along the shore of the Well, I was hanging out in the parking lot chatting with one of our volunteers. While I was standing there I noticed some Western Bluebirds and a juvenile Northern Mockingbird hanging out in a large juniper nearby.

So, since I still had my camera in hand, I decided to take both more me-time and more photographs. I happily clicked away, easily taking another fifty pictures of these very cooperative subjects. Nothing particularly exciting about the whole experience...just a chance to take pictures of some fairly common birds. Birds I have seen hundreds of times before. Or so I thought.

That evening I told Sonja about my morning in the parking lot and proceeded to pour through the 264 images, culling them down to the 21 best, including this one of the mockingbird.

I hadn't even considered the option that this bird wasn't a Northern Mockingbird. I see them in that tree all the time. It looks like a mockingbird...it's in the same place as other mockingbirds...it's a mockingbird. Then I happened to mention to Sonja that some birders had seen a Sage Thrasher only a few days prior in the same spot. She thought that was pretty cool, since neither of us had ever seen one before, and thought we should try to go find it sometime.

Before bed that evening, while sitting on the crapper, no less, I was flipping through one of our bird books when I suddenly spotted a picture of the mockingbird I had taken a picture of that morning. However, next to it was the label "Sage Thrasher". I flipped back to the mockingbird section, then back to the thrashers. They looked pretty similar, particularly the juvenile mockingbird, but there were some definite differences.

After re-examining the photo there was no question about it. What I had assumed was simply a young Northern Mockingbird turns out to be a brand new lifer for me. It was a reminder to me never to take a bird for granted. Even if it's one you've seen a million times before, one you've seen so many times you don't even have to think about it before IDing it.

Anyway, here's a photo of one of the bluebirds I saw, too.

Yesterday Morning

I took some me-time yesterday morning and spent an hour on the shore of Montezuma Well with my camera. This is what I saw.

Look closely...

Wondrous Variety

Most people, I'm sure, would classify a species as a group of animals that generally share the same characteristics (ie, color, size, shape). While the exact definition relates more towards reproductive viability, in most cases an individual member of a single species tends to look pretty much the same as all the other members. As far as birds go that's fairly typical, with a few notable exceptions. And in North America, no other bird, at least that I am aware of, displays as much variation in plumage than the Dark-eyed Junco.

While there are seven recognized "forms" of the Dark-eyed Junco in North America, most people are generally familiar with only the one or two that visit their winter feeders. In Fairbanks, for instance, we only saw "slate-colored" forms. Now that we are in Arizona, however, things have gotten much more interesting. Today I identified four distinct forms of Dark-eyed Juncos in our yard. I got photos of three of them today and am using an older picture I took of the fourth for comparison.

Here is the "Oregon" form. Due to how dark this bird's head is we can even identify it as a male. These forms tend to have the greatest contrast in their plumage, with very dark heads and much lighter bellies and backs.

I've identified this one as a "pink-sided" junco. Now, out of all four of my identifications, this is the one I'm least confident about. Not to say I don't still think it's a pink-sided, just that there is a twinge of uncertainty remaining. Now, I chose pink-sided primarily due to how extensive the buffy coloring is on the breast. In oregon forms, you should be able to see some white near the top of the breast. That said, it's head is still a bit on the dark side, so there is a chance it could be a first year female oregon. But for the purposes of this blog post, it's a pink-sided. So there.

The grey-headed form is almost as common around here as the Oregon, but for some reason we haven't been seeing as many lately. There were only two that I spotted this afternoon. I took the photo of this grey-headed junco near Flagstaff last October, actually. Take special note of the color of the bill on this bird, then continue to the next picture.

Now, when I first saw this bird today my first reaction was grey-headed. Then I took a closer look at the bill. Can you see how the upper half is much darker than the lower half? That makes this bird a "red-backed" junco. For most non-birders, this distinction doesn't really mean that much, and it might still be kind of hard to see. So here are the two birds side-by-side:

Really, the only difference between these two forms is the darker upper bill on the red-backed. And when you see them next to each other like this, it's pretty obvious.

So, there you have it. Four different junco forms in one yard in a single afternoon. Now, to me this is all incredibly interesting. But I suppose that's the reason our license plate says "BRDNERD". So, for those of you who don't find the many forms of juncos fascinating enough to dedicate an entire blog post to them, here's a special treat just for you.

You're very own Abert's Towhee! For how big this bird is (nearly robin-sized) they're rather spineless. The juncos spent the better part of the afternoon pushing this one around, bullying it off of the platform feeder.

Anyway, now you know more about juncos.