Had to jump to the red phone last night. My email box was electric with reports of a possible Aztec Thrush...in Nogales? In the Chiricahuas? Nope. Right in my little town of Sedona.
The report came from Jodi, a Flagstaff birder who works at the Museum of Northern Arizona and heard it from a colleague. I called her and she vouched for the guy, though she did mention he wasn't a birder, but rather a paleontologist who tags along on bird research trips.
"Jodi," said I, "you sure he didn't see an archaeopteryx?"
"Har-de-har," said Jodi. "Good luck."
So after zipping off a few email inquiries, I snoozed, got up early, plopped on my pith helmet and drove to Jordan Trail. I bore the burden of promises to my poor friend Tom to call him the exact second I saw the bird. He could not unchain himself from his desk and he'd rather gaze upon an Aztec Thrush than discover a chest full of gold doubloons. They'd eluded him each time they'd shown up across the border, which is like once every 2-3 years, and, frankly, he's not getting any younger.
My bud Roger joined me -- AZTH being one of the few lifers possible for him these days -- and we scoured the joint for about 2 1/2 hours. As they say on cop shows, we had the hinky feeling it wasn't going to pan out. The junipers weren't in berry, there was only a little water in depressions along the slickrock washes, and the only other thrushes present were a couple of scraggly-looking robins. The additional presence of a Phainopepla pair and a lone Western Tanager offered a slight ray of hope, but really very slight. There are only a handful of records from far southern Arizona and none from Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix and is still 100 miles south of us.
Toward the end, Rog emerged from the scrub and thought he'd figured it out. He had had a few moments of doubt watching what turned out to be a Spotted Towhee pop in and out of a bush. There were enough superficial similarities that he thought that could have been the error. I personally thought it was the distraction of the stegasaurus skeleton, but I let him have his way.
When I dragged my sweaty butt home, I quickly put office-bound Tom on suicide watch, and opened an email from ace birder Mark that read, "Beware the juvenile Spotted Towhee." With that, my fever broke and I got on with what passes for my life.
Now I'm off the devour the rest of Mark Obmascik's The Big Year. Ya'll read that? It totally rocks.
You guys have any summer stories of juveniles that fooled you?
Well, for someone who hates to bird in the Arizona summer, I'm having a pretty great time.
Business took me to Flagstaff, so I emailed my friend Tom and he was up for post-work birding. We decided to go after the secret prize dwelling on Mt. Kendrick. This was actually karmic payback. Tom had already located said prize, based on surprise intelligence from a trail worker. He sent me directions, and I drove 55 miles each way, hunted for two hours, and definitely did not share in the prize. Barely saw a junco.
So, on this late, breezeless afternoon, with desultory thunderheads grumbling and spitting in the distance, up we trudged.
At a certain point I said, "Here's where I looked. Squinted at every tiny bit of whitewash. Peered up every damn tree."
"Oh," said Tom, "yeah, that's where [No. AZ legend] Chuck first looked, too. It's much further."
"Ah," said I, and on we trudged.
Mt. Kendrick has been badly burnt twice in recent years, the fires jumping about in a "checkerboard" pattern. After a patch of charred trunks and healthy fern, we entered a robust, mixed conifer grove.
"Here," Tom indicated. "Check every tree."
Roger that. We split up, and after about ten minutes of inspection, a loud, four-note hoot echoed through the grove. We whirled toward each other, our startled faces saying, "Was that you?" We simultaneously realized no, and the hooter helpfully hooted again.
Beaming in, it wasn't hard to claim our prize. There, on a low, exposed branch sat the gorgeous pair of Mexican Spotted Owls we sought. A lifer for me, and a total thrill for both of us. They were so lovely, totally unfazed by our presence. We spent some time drinking them in, a true happy hour.
Wandering back down the mountain, we witnessed a short, fat rainbow linking a black cloud with a distant peak, and for a moment, all seemed auspicious and perfect.
A sudden errand dictated a round trip to Tucson yesterday. Actually, I volunteered for it, knowing that two birds I'd never seen were being reported: Reddish Egret and Tricolored Heron. It also occured to me that this is monsoon season, which is when Cassin's and Botteri's Sparrows sing. And to top it off, sightings of the previously-nesting Flame-colored Tanagers were still current.
I worked out a plan to snag all five, listened to the sparrows' songs on the 'net, and at 4 a.m. yesterday, off I went.
Arizona is quite conducive to fast driving. On the way down, I got so into a long-forgotten Black Sabbath song on the radio, when I looked down, I found I was pushing 100 mph!
Didn't take long to get to my first destination -- the mesquite- and ocotillo-studded grasslands that flank the approach to Madera Canyon, south of Tucson. Sparrow country.
I climbed out the first time and bam! a singing Botteri's Sparrow on top of a bush about 20 yards away. At first I was thrilled. BOSP is a pretty hot ABA bird. But then I had that sinking feeling. Haven't you ever noticed that when the first bird or two of the day practically drop into your lap, the rest of the day can be excrutiating? I much prefer the days when the last bird is the fabulous find.
And so it was. I got out several places in likely Cassin's Sparrow habitat. No dice. Tho I did get a spectacular look at a Peregrine Falcon just lofting up and flapping into the day's first lazy circles.
Heading up Madera, I positioned myself where the tanager had been last seen. A too-friendly birder from Pittsburgh pulled up and chatted and chatted and...but he did say where he had seen the bird the other day. My instincts said no, but my mouth said sure, I'll check that out. So I did, stealthily bushwhacking for twenty minutes to discover that my robustly singing quarry was...Summer Tanager. Second time I've whiffed on this bird.
Back down the canyon with a couple of Hail Mary stops for the Cassin's. No way.
Next stop--the birder's favorite!--a wastewater treatment facility, this one being in the Avra Valley west of Tucson.
The Avra Valley plant maintains four sizable ponds, two full and amenable to ducks, coots, etc., and two with lower water levels and grasses, more attractive to waders. Really, they should have seven circular, concentric ponds. It was 105 at least and humid due to the water.
Birds were in fair abundance, but I was on a time schedule and had one target, reported, of course, in the furthest pond. All the fluids evaporating from my body was bad enough. But the ponds also held about 150 Black-necked Stilts. Now don't get me wrong. BNST's are lovely birds. When they feed and shut up. But when they all rise in alarm and circle you with that incessant high-pitched bark...I suggested a while back to a birding friend that if military intelligence wanted to get detainees to talk, forget about Abu Ghraib-style torture. Just incessantly play tapes of Killdeer alarm calls. Yeah maybe, he said, but personally I'd use stilts. After yesterday, I'd have to call it a draw.
Needless to say, given that I snagged the Botteri's too easily, the Tricolored Heron I sought was nowhere to be found. After an hour, I was on the verge of bagging it. But the damn sign-in sheet had someone reporting it just an hour previously. So I did one of those, "I'll just look once more, and then I really have to go" numbers, slogged back to the western pond, and there was the blasted bird, in full view on the bank, cruelly mocking me.
I was now, of course, hopelessly late for my appointment, but found the party understanding. Drinking a camel's-worth of water, I set off for my final destination. The route took me through distinctly unlovely SE Tucson to a small man-made lake that deserved its location. Looking across backed-up scum so thick the grackles were walking on its surface, the reported juvie Reddish Egret, a great bird for AZ, lounged on the far bank. Which was good, as I was really, hopelessly late for getting the object of my errand back to Sedona.
All was well in the end and I felt enormously pleased. In July, a month when I usually barely bird if I can avoid it, I batted better than .500, snagging three excellent new birds with only a somewhat life-threatening loss of bodily fluid.
My blogging has been non-existent because I am the anti-bear.
I have a body metabolism that runs quite hot. So. Where do I live? Saskatchewan? Caribou? Stockholm? No. Arizona. From June through September I hibernate.
Last year, I compensated by birding at our highest elevations -- Mt. Humphreys in the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff rises to well over 12,000 feet. Niche birds there: Clark's Nutcracker, Three-toed Woodpecker, Blue Grouse.
Not this year. I got my ya-ya's out pretty well in France, so hibernation has been nearly total.
But you know how it is. You can't just not bird. Especially when you just got new binocs, like I did. So, on the rare occasions when I've been sighted in the wild, I've been concentrating on the last possible lifers among our local breeding birds. Went to Mingus Mountain and got great looks at Greater Pewee. Spent a sweaty, frustrating afternoon looking for the near-mythic Mississippi Kite pair rumored to nest on the Verde River. And two days ago, I spent two hours squinting up tree trunks in a ponderosa pine patch on Mt. Kendrick fruitlessly searching for the Mexican Spotted Owl all of my birding friends have turned up. A 55-mile trip to the patch. Tough beat.
And now, not only is it 100 every day but the humidity's rising as we build to a(hopefully virile) monsoon season. Our area hasn't seen a drop of rain since April 24.
We're scouting now for prime locations to attract southbound shorebirds. But it's gonna have to be something really good to lure me out of my cave.