Mad AZ Monk

Arizona Is So Damn Awesome!

Checked in at my local internet bird forum at 3:30 p.m. and just blinked at it. A total four-alarm bird had been seen at Lake Ashurst near Flagstaff at 10 a.m. by a reliable birder and not one of my (possibly soon-to-be-ex-) friends called me. I frantically phoned around to learn when it was last seen, and when I heard that one of the ace local birders was up there, I said screw it, and jumped in the car.

Got caught behind an agonizingly slow Missourian going up Oak Creek Canyon but eventually braked in a cloud of dust at the lake's south end. Hustling down to lakeside, the first birds I saw were two Willets. Excellent birds, my first for the county, and I nearly kicked them aside to get in position for the other.

Scanning the lake revealed small knots of ducks, four White-faced Ibis, a Wilson's Phalarope and some distant terns, but not the prize I sought.

Then BAM! everything scattered. "What the hell," I thought, just as a Peregrine Falcon streaked in like a missile and terrorized the lake for a few minutes. It felt like concrete hardening in my chest as the "everyone's-going-to-have-seen-this-bird-but-me" fugue tuned up in my head.

I shambled away, thinking I'd just drive to other side of the lake and see if one of the terns was a Common, which I need for ABA. Next thing I knew I was in a cartoonish, eyeball-popping freeze. There, happily feeding on the bank, stood my bird: a juvenile Long-tailed Jaeger.

The bird was so fearless, I came within 10 yards and just drank it in--the complex plumage and the fact that it was even there at all. Checking in at the Arizona Bird Committee site, it seems that this is the 11th state bird seen in 9 sightings, three of which had been found dead. The last record was from 1996. A great lifer and a massive bird for Arizona.

But check this out. In Arizona, middle of the desert, no coastline, I have seen my life Yellow-billed Loon, Sabine's Gull, White-winged and Surf Scoters, Pacific Loon, and now the jaeger. I think this is #316 for the state, having lived here less than four years.

In my excitement, I didn't even look hard for another potential lifer that had been seen there today, a juvie Sanderling. But my friend and I will go back tomorrow morning early. Stay tuned...