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.
I went on a bird hike this morning here at the Well sponsored by Northern Arizona Audubon. I wasn't planning to, but Sonja needed to study for two exams she has this week, so I thought it might be less distracting if I wasn't in the house making noise. We didn't see much that we weren't expecting, although we did have a Bald Eagle fly over at one point. Here are a couple more Western Bluebird pictures. They're always cooperative and photogenic.
We did get some great views of a Sora forgaging around the edge of the water below us. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do very well taking pictures of Robin-sized birds from 150 yards away. You can sort of tell it's a Sora, at least. I set up the BirdCam along the water's edge this morning with the hopes of getting some video of some of the waterfowl, and particularly the Sora. But for some reason the motion sensor never went off. The only videos I got were of me breaking our tripod as I was getting it unstuck this evening when I went to go fetch it. I'll have to figure out what I did wrong and try again some other time.
