Mad AZ Monk

Casualties of the Ground War and the Air War

The leading edge of the southbound migration is beginning to drop into Arizona, but that doesn't mean that seeing the birds isn't fraught with danger.

I was in Flagstaff yesterday on business. What business, you ask? Well, interviewing someone for a magazine story I'm writing on alpaca ranching (really). But you probably already guessed that.

Anyway, my friend Tom and I arranged to zip out for a late afternoon scan of Ashurst Lake. Seemed quiet at first, save the ubiquitous Osprey and three interesting blobs at the south end.

Driving there, the blobs magically became very nice birds -- three Marbled Godwits. Admiring those, we watched a flitty flock make its way toward us from the north side. I should have known that the Eternal Axiom of Birding was in play -- after you see a lifer once, you see the bird everywhere. In this case, a delightful flock of 11 Black Terns, eventually joined in aerobatic competition by several Common Nighthawks.

I was really digging all this, kind of mesmerized by the feeding terns, lulled by the sunset, when Tom's voice shouts, "Dagnabbit!"

I turned to see him near water's edge, shin-deep in rich, black, volcanic muck and doing those moves where you try to haul a foot out but all that happens is you spring back to your original position. I wanted to help, really I did, but I figured what use would I be when I couldn't even see through my tears of laughter?

Tom made it out, his boots encased in three inches of cold mud. I tried to cheer him up by observing that once he peeled the mud off, he'd have the prettiest feet in Flagstaff. His look suggested that he was seriously weighing whether to drive me back to town.

But, as we know, karma is as karma does.

More alpaca business took me in the other direction today, toward Prescott. I wrapped it up in time to check a body of water there called Watson Lake. It's a nice deep lake with one marshy end, just like we like it. And the waning rays of the Arizona sun were illuminating the unusual yellow rock formations on the east side called the Granite Dells. Lovely.

Scanning among the mobs of breeders, I counted 27 loafing Double-crested Cormorants (one of the funniest moments in my early birding career was proudly announcing to my housemate that I had just seen my first Double-necked Cormorant...) and then was startled by a mass of white. Closer inspection revealed ~75 Black-necked Stilts, flying and landing, flying and landing, as though they were being manipulated from above by a single set of strings.

Then, near the far shore (of course) I saw a patch of white on a snag. I could make out it was a tern, somewhat small with a black cap and white body, leaving really only two likely choices.

So, what did I do? Got down to the nearest point to it and waited for it to fly. For an hour. And then quick as a wink, it did. I scrambled up and tracked it along the shore, alarming some domestic geese into raucous honking, and then I stopped and concentrated. Really staring, I was trying so hard to pick out the salient details that I barely registered a rush of wings, an audible grunt (I swear) and thwack! something the size of a ping-pong ball hit the front of my right shoulder.

For the first time in my birding life, I'd been dive-bombed with bird poop. I whirled about, but the culprit had disappeared (though, by the looks of its missile, a duck). By the time I regained my composure enough to check back for the tern, it had returned to its inscrutable perch. I'm fairly sure I heard Tom's laughter on the wind.

Thirty minutes later, the bird got into motion again, and I determined it was a Forster's Tern, not the Common I need for a state bird. But still. Some nice sightings and a story that made me chuckle all the way home.

Posted by MadMonk at August 28, 2004 05:55 AM