From Desert to a Lake

After taking several trips to the desert area of Pima Canyon Wash, I decided to change it up a bit and check out Saguaro Lake which is located on the Salt River.  A recent sighting of a Surf Scoter was the main reason to visit this lake.  Although it is not a life bird for me (having seen it twice before), it is a fairly rare bird in Arizona.  But every fall it seems that about a dozen or two show up in Arizona and various lakes.  So with that being my main focus I headed to Saguaro Lake and arrived very early at the marina area; found a parking spot about in the middle of the floating docks and walked to the edge of the lake.  And there it was, had there not been a couple of American Coots in the vicinity, it would have been the first bird I encountered.  The 3 species of scoters in North America, are stocky, short-necked diving birds that feed on crustaceans and mollusks and their breeding habitat is the tundra regions of the far north.  I walked out on the floating dock and stood there watching and observing as it was diving and if a coot ventured too close, then it swiftly chased it away from its claimed territory.

 Surf Scoter

 Surf Scoter

Surf Scoter

Not too far away I witnessed a Pied-billed Grebe surface with a crayfish held firmly in its beak.  Looks like this grebe captured itself a nice morsel for breakfast.

 Pied-billed Grebe

Pied-billed Grebe

After leaving the Marina area of Saguaro Lake, I then headed to Butcher Jones Beach area which is still on Saguaro Lake, but have to travel a few miles to get to this spot.  As soon as I got out of the car, I heard a Gray Flycatcher calling.  It was not too hard to locate due to its incessant calling, but trying to get a photo was very difficult as I could only find one small clearing in the branches to shoot through.  This bird is one of the infamous and difficult-to-ID birds in the Empidonax family.  Many of them can only be safely identified by their calls.  However the Gray Flycatcher is probably one of the easiest to ID because of a behavior that it displays that the other do not show.  I has a behavior of pumping its tail downward very similar to the phoebes.  

 Gray Flycatcher

Gray Flycatcher

And of course standing on the beach area and checking out the waterfowl was the main objective.  While using my scope to check out the birds further out, much to my surprise, a couple of Common Mergansers swam right by close to shore.

Common Merganser

After getting good shots of a male Lesser Scaup a while back at Fountain Hills Lake, I decided to try for a photo of a female at this location.  While not nearly as good as I would have liked, it still is nice to capture the females to add to the personal photo library.  A small flock of Buffleheads were also noticed a bit further out.  This is our smallest duck in the US, but it is also one of the most dynamic to see with its clean look and iridescent colors in the sunlight.

 Lesser Scaup - Female

Bufflehead

Probably the strangest photo that I captured was a Great Blue Heron perched on some rocks on a desert cliff with Saguaro Cactus in the photo.  The bird definitely looks out of place in this surrounding, but water was not far away.

Great Blue Heron

It is always a joy to be able to go birding and just simply observe and watch the habits and behaviors of the birds, especially those that are visiting Arizona for the winter months.

Desert Meanderings

After so many birding trips to escape the heat of the desert and with fall finally settling in, the temperatures have subsided somewhat and now it is much more enjoyable to do some some local birding.  A large part of Arizona lies in the Sonoran Desert, including Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs.  Recent birding trips have been to familiar desert locations with some familiar birds.  Saturday, my original goal was a long hike in South Mountain Park, but changed my plans after seeing the reports for a Red-breasted Merganser at Glendale Recharge Ponds by birding friend, Tommy DeBardeleben earlier in the week and then reconfirmed by Steve Hosmer a couple of days later.  The last time I had visited this place, my camera was out of order and I tried birding it with binoculars only.  This is a tough place to go birding with just binoculars as the ponds are fairly large and the waterfowl are usually on the opposite side.  (Not too difficult to figure out why that is!)  I also recently purchased a modest spotting scope and this would be a great tool to have when visiting this place.  

I arrived there early and started scanning pond number 5, that had lots of waterfowl on it and during this time Babs Buck arrived and joined me.  We spent a lot of time scanning this pond without finding our target bird, so we moved over to pond number 4 to see if maybe it might be there and after about 45 minutes we moved back to pond 5 (those 2 ponds were the only ones with water).  Within about 5 minutes of returning I discovered our target bird out past some American Coots and a couple of Eared Grebes.  Mergansers are diving birds and easy to miss as one scans a pond if they are under water in one of their dives.  The distance to the bird was pretty far, but since this was a life bird for both of us, we took photos anyway for documentation purposes.  Of the 3 merganser species in North America, this is the species that is hardest to find in Arizona.

Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

Not the best place to try to get photos of birds, but a couple that did cooperate to a certain extent we an American Pipit and an adult Bald Eagle that flew over being harassed by an Osprey.  The pipits were abundant and could be heard flying overhead before we finally found them on the ground.

American Pipit

Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle

The title of this blog post is 'Desert Meanderings' simply because my most recent birding had been brief visits to some of my most familiar spots and along with some of those hikes, a few photos were taken from time to time of some of the birds that I find in almost every trip.  Since I never get tired of looking at birds, why not take more photos?

First off, Javalina Trail and Pima Canyon Trail in South Mountain Park.  From one of my hikes on Javalina Trail, I found a couple of cooperative Gilder Flickers and my first-of-fall 'Oregon' Dark-eyed Junco.

Gilded Flicker

Gilded Flicker

'Oregon' Dark-eyed Junco

Next from Pima Canyon Wash in South Mountain Park, an Ash-throated Flycatcher, a Northern Mockingbird, and a Rock Wren.

Ash-throated Flycatcher

Northern Mockingbird

Rock Wren

A quick stop at ASU Research Park presented me with a very nice Green Heron and a Ring-necked Duck.

Green Heron

Ring-necked Duck

And finally from a short stop at Fountain Hills Lake, a Killdeer and another first-of-fall Lesser Scaup.

Killdeer

Killdeer

Lesser Scaup

Lesser Scaup

Have some interesting birding trip planned in the future, so it should be interesting to see what I might see and photograph.  

  

Birding in Prescott, Arizona

On Sunday 2 February 2014, I teamed up with Jason Morgan and headed north to the areas of Prescott and Prescott Valley to do some birding.  Jason along with a couple others were getting some very nice photos of the Common Goldeneye.  This duck is quite spectacular in appearance and while I have seen them many times in the past, the birds were always at quite a distance and my photos always left a little to be desired.  My goal was to try and get a better photo than I had in the past, so our first stop was Yavapai Lake and I was not disappointed.  Amongst the 100 or so Ring-necked Ducks were at least 6 male Common Goldeneyes and a single male Canvasback, which was a bonus to me.  Had to search a different spot, Fain Park to find the females.

 

 Common Goldeye - Male

 

Common Goldeye - Female

 

Canvasback - Male

 

While we did not linger too long in Fain Park, we did find some other cool waterfowl including a female Lesser Scaup and some Common Mergansers of which the females were the only ones that I could approach close enough for photos. 

 

 Lesser Scaup - Female

 

Common Merganser - Female

 

During our brief visit we were witness to one of Mother Nature's events in the survival of birds, a raptor capturing another bird for its daily existence.  In this case, it was a Cooper's Hawk that captured a Western Scrub-Jay.  Typically, jays are notorious for finding the location of a raptor and then sounding the alarm to other birds by sending out alarm calls to let others know of the raptor's location.  In this case the Cooper's Hawk got the jump on them and once the victim had been captured, the rest of the Western Scrub-Jays really did a lot of scolding to no avail.  Yes, is a bit disturbing to see this, but this happens daily in nature and we could only revel in what we had just witnessed.

 

Cooper's Hawk with prey, a Western Scrub-Jay

 

Our next destination was going to be Watson Lake and this is where we had agreed to meet up with another Facebook birder, Cynthia White.  She knows the Prescott area well and we were very happy to meet her and actually get the chance to do some birding with her.  Watson Lake was covered with waterfowl and it was mindboggling to try to count the various ducks.  A couple of highlights were actually raptors that were putting on a show for us.  The first was a juvenile Bald Eagle that was being harassed by a couple of Common Ravens.  But this eagle really seemed unperturbed by all the commotion and continued to ride the thermals and in fact at one time they were flying almost side-by-side.  For those that are reading this and are a bit confused by the coloration of the Bald Eagle, this is a juvenile.  It takes about 4 years for a Bald Eagle to obtain its complete white head and tail and dark brown body, which is the vision most people think of when they hear Bald Eagle.  A good example in showing that identifying birds can be a bit confusing, especially to new birders and to non-birders. 

 

 Bald Eagle - Juvenile

 

Bald Eagle and Common Raven - (note the size difference)

 

We also had a Northern Harrier put on quite a show for us as it was flying over the reeds in the lake hunting for prey.  A one point it landed on a tree snag and gave us really good close up views of this winter visitor to Arizona.  This bird has an 'owl-like' appearance to it, but usually is hard to see as these birds rarely pose close for photos and for viewing.

 

Northern Harrier

 

Once we finished our walk around Watson Lake, we then discussed our other options and I had heard that a Tundra Swan had been reported a few days ago at Willow Lake and we agreed that since we were in the neighborhood, we should at least stop by to take a look.  Thanks to Cynthia for knowing how to get there quickly and finding easy access parking.  We got out of our vehicles and I noticed a white mound that kind of looked like a white rock or maybe a white piece of trash out in the lake.  We all looked a little close and decided it might be the swan with its head tucked under the wing taking a nap.  We quickly made out way to the lake edge and the closer we got, I knew we had found our target bird, the Tundra Swan.  I had really never seen a swan in the wild before, but I knew they were big and when we got to looking at this one and noticing the company it was keeping; Northern Shovelers, Green-winged Teal, and American Coots, then I realized how huge these birds really are.  This one never took flight for us, but it think it would be an amazing sight to see these birds take to the air.

 

 Tundra Swan

 

Tundra Swan

 

In our (or was it my?) obsession to get closer to the swan to try for photos, I observed another unusual bird flying towards us; a White-tailed Kite!  I have seen this bird before a few times in Maricopa County and was rather surprised to see one in this location.  We made a note of where it might have went and once we finished our business with the swan, we headed in the direction of where we thought it might be and once we got around the large cottonwood tree, we found it perched in another shorter tree.  We took a couple of distant photos and as we tried to approach it to get closer it took flight again and it put on a 'kiting' show for us where it would hover in flight without moving forward.  This was especially rewarding as I found out that this bird was a life bird for both Jason and Cynthia!  While my photos leave a lot to be desired, they are at least good enough for an ID if needed.  Cynthia managed a very nice in-flight photo when we first discovered this bird.

 

White-tailed Kite

 

This turned out to be a great day for all three of us with Jason getting 3 life birds and Cynthia and myself 1 each.  This is definitely a spot that I need to visit more often and I encourage others to do so as well.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fountain Hills Lake, AZ - 13 Nov 2012

Fountain Hills Lake, in the community of Fountain Hills, AZ is a man-made lake with a HUGE fountain that that can be seen for miles when it is shooting water far up into the sky.  But not only are the local inhabitants drawn to this spot, it has also become quite the hot spot for birds, especially migrants.  Ellen and I stopped here on Tuesday and we saw large numbers of waterfowl and some were birds that are normally only seen in this area during migration and on this day the Hooded Mergansers were the ones that were putting on quite a show.  We found 1 group that consisted of 10 males and 1 female and the the males were putting on quite a show for the lone female with their displays and strange croaking sounds. A short distance away, another male was with a group of 6 females, but they were more interested in feeding and constantly diving.

 Hooded Merganser-Male

Hooded Merganser-Male

Hooded Merganser-Male

Along with all the waterfowl, we also found a few shore birds and a plover as well.  The Killdeer is considered a plover and spends a lot of time on dry land, but usually in the vicinity of water.  This photo of a Killdeer is actually one of my favorites from this visit.  We also found Greater Yellowlegs, Spotted Sandpiper and some Least Sandpipers.

 Killdeer

 Greater Yellowlegs

 Spotted Sandpiper

 Least Sandpiper

We also found a Great Blue Heron that allowed us close enough that I could focus in on a close-up of its head.  We also watched a Green Heron fly into a tree and it stayed there long enough for us to get close enough to capture its photo as well.

Great Blue Heron

Green Heron

 

Back to some waterfowl and some Lesser Scaup, with a photo that included a male and a female.  And finally a group of Northern Shovelers all taking part in a feeding frenzy.

 

Lesser Scaup

Northern Shovelers