To Tucson and a CBC

This year I took part in the Tucson CBC (Christmas Bird Count) for the first time.  The CBC was being held on Sunday and good friend, Chris Rohrer, invited me to come down on Saturday night so we could get an early start on Sunday.  I decided to try taking advantage of the Saturday road trip and do some birding on the way by detouring through the Santa Cruz Flats area.  The weather was definitely not in my favor as it had rained earlier in the day and when I reached the Flats, the rain had stopped, but the roads were a bit muddy, so I restricted myself to the paved and good gravel roads. Not too much to report, as I dipped on the Black-throated Blue Warbler that had been reported, but as I started heading to Tucson, some of the birds along the road were very interesting such as several Lark Sparrows, a Prairie Falcon, a pair of Harris's Hawks, and a juvenile Cooper's Hawk.

 

 Lark Sparrow

 

 Prairie Falcon

 

 Cooper's Hawk - Juvenile

 

Harris's Hawks

 

Once I left the Flats, I texted Chris to let him know I was on my way as we had made plans to meet at Sweetwater Wetlands.  Amazingly, as I turned the corner onto Sweetwater Road, Chris was coming in from the south.  Talk about perfect timing!  Sweetwater Wetlands is one of the premier birding spots in the Tucson area and I have never been disappointed with any of my visits to this spot.  Great place to find raptors and waterfowl together. 

 

 Cooper's Hawk - Adult

 

 Green Heron

 

 Ladderback Woodpecker - Male

 

Pied-billed Grebe

 

From here we still had a bit of daylight left and we headed to Reid Park in Tucson.  Usually a crowded place with lots of people, but with the dark and overcast sky, the number of humans were quite low and it actually started raining while we were there and we had to take cover for a brief time in one of the ramadas.  The waterfowl here are so accustomed to people that they actually swim right up to the shore looking for handouts.

 

 Canvasback - Female

 

Canvasback - Male

 

Another Pied-billed Grebe - had to use a flash as it was very dark with cloud cover

 

 Results of the CBC and photos will have to be addressed in the next blog post. 

 

 

Santa Cruz Flats

About midway between the cities of Phoenix and Tucson lies an agricultural area in the flat open desert.  The Santa Cruz River that originates in extreme southern Arizona flows south for a ways into Mexico and then turns northward and flows back into Arizona and eventually makes its ways to this flat expanse of desert.  This river is dry in most places, but water does flow when there is adequate rainfall, but by the time it reaches the 'Santa Cruz Flats', it quickly dries up.  This area is well known for the abundance of birdlife and most of this can be contributed to the agricultural development in this area.  If not for this development, this would be a very dry desert area and not very hospital to most avian life.  In the winter, many specialty migrants show up to spend their winters here. 

 

About a week ago another birding friend, Jason Morgan contacted me to see if I would like to travel to this area to look for some specialty birds.  I was more than happy to take him down there.  For a person to travel there on their own for the first time, it can be a bit daunting as the network of roads can be a bit confusing and knowing where to look for certain birds does take a bit of getting to know the place.  Even after several trips to this area, I still find more roads to explore.  One of the first birds we discovered was a nice Ferruginous Hawk in the early morning light.  This one seemed unbothered with us and let us take photos from the vehicle, in fact we were almost too close.  This bird was a great start for the day.

 

Ferruginous Hawk

 

We also had a Prairie Falcon in the early morning, but it definitely did not want its photo taken, but the second one we found later in the morning was a little more accommodating.  But even then, it did not allow us to get too close.  Prairie Falcons seem to be one of the most wary of all the raptors.

 

Prairie Falcon

 

By far, the most numerous of all the raptors we found was the Red-tailed Hawk.  Here is just a sampling of a few of them.

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

Red-tailed Hawk

 

Our target bird for Jason, was the Crested Caracara.  This is an area that they can be found with regularity and after driving to the places where I normally found them in the past and coming up empty, I was starting to think I had failed to find them.  I had known that it was common for them to hang out with Common Ravens and had advised Jason of that fact.  Finally we came to an intersection and got out of the vehicle to scan the fields and sure enough, Jason was quick to spot some far off in the distance.  Most of the farm land in this area is posted and this presents a bit of a problem in getting close to these awesome birds.  We traveled around to the far side that got us a bit closer and was able to at least get better views, but even then they were probably still ¼ mile away.  Photos were not meant to be this time, so I made a feeble attempt to at least try,

 

Crested Caracara

 

We then worked our way up to the sod farms where wintertime can bring Mountain Plovers to the state of Arizona.  These are birds that most people would think love to be near water and most plovers are found near water.  Quite contrary, the Mountain Plover likes to nest on short grass prairies, especially near Prairie Dog towns.  They breed on the high plains of North America from southern Alberta and Saskatchewan south to northern New Mexico and Texas.  They are not a common bird and their numbers are being monitored due to loss of habitat on their breeding grounds.  It is a bird that many birders love to find as they can be difficult to locate.  Jason and I were fortunate to find 6 of these, but they were even further away from us than the Caracara.  Once again, I still took some photos just for documentation purposes.

 

 3 Mountain Plovers

 

Mountain Plover

 

As we were leaving the field where the Mountain Plovers were located, Jason and his sharp eyes noticed a Burrowing Owl along the side of the road on his side of the vehicle.  We parked right there in the road and watched and photographed this character for some time.  It was probably the most cooperative of all the birds we saw on this day.  By the looks of the pellets outside his 'burrow', it appears to be finding plenty to feed on in this area.

 

 Burrowing Owl

 

Burrowing Owl

 

Our last stop was at Arizona City Lake just to check out the waterfowl that might be there.  Here we found some Eared Grebe and it was nice to compare them to the Horned Grebe that I had seen recently in Chandler.  Very good comparison which helps to make future identifications much easier. 

 

Eared Grebe

 

Another great day of birding and sometimes the fun is in the hunt for those special birds that you know are there and then when you find them, it is quite gratifying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Santa Cruz Flats & Sweetwater Wetlands - 24 Nov 2012

Mentioned earlier this week that I had gotten behind in my blog postings!  This time I have to go all the way back to the 24th of November and try to remember how the day went.  Mark Ochs contacted me on Friday night and wanted to know if I was interested in heading south to try and find the Groove-billed Ani that had been reported at Sweetwater Wetlands.  Of course I did!  So I met him in Gold Canyon and we took the back roads to Tucson and glad I went as we saw a lot of raptors on the way down and on the way back.  But more about the raptors later in the post.  Our first goal was Sweetwater and the search for the Groove-billed Ani.  When we arrived, many other vehicles were arriving and I think just about all of them were there for the same thing, 'Find the Ani'!  We joined up with John Higgins and headed to the west area and ponds 9 and 10 and John was the first one to spot it far away at the top of a tree with some Salt Cedar in front of us.  Mark got his scope on it and I got a really good look at it and could even see the grooves in the bill.  Attempted to take a photo, but too much clutter in front of the bird did not make for a good photo.  So without a good photo of the Ani, I will start off this post with my first photographed bird of the day, a Yellow-headed Blackbird.  This is one sharp looking bird!

 

Yellow-headed Blackbird

 

Other birds I had the pleasure of photographing at Sweetwater Wetlands included a juvenile Cooper's Hawk that had apparently taken a bath and found itself a perch in the sun and was really relaxed in spreading its wings and tail to allow the sun to assist in drying out.

 

Cooper's Hawk

 

The rest of the photos from this place are all water birds of one kind or another; an American Wigeon, a Green Heron, a Northern Shoveler, a Pied-billed Grebe, and a Ruddy Duck.

 

 American Wigeon

 

 Green Heron

 

 Northern Shoveler

 

 Pied-billed Grebe

 

Ruddy Duck

 

Once we left Tucson and headed back home, Mark suggested that we check out the Santa Cruz Flats area for raptors and sure glad we did.  This area is a great place to see and observe many species of raptors. Our little side trip did not disappoint.  We observed numerous Red-tailed Hawks, but probably the most stunning one was a 'Dark-morph' Red Tail.  

 

Dark-morph-Red-tailed Hawk

 

Other hawks included a nice Ferruginous Hawk, a couple of Prairie Falcons and about 8 Crested Caracaras.  The hawks posed nicely on poles for us as long as we stayed in the car.  The Crested Caracaras were a distance away in a farmers corral that did not allow us to get close up views.

 

Ferruginous Hawk

 

 Prairie Falcon

 

Crested Caracara

 

And just to make sure you read the entire post, here is my only photo of the target bird, a Groove-billed Ani.  (Kind of looks like a black blob, doesn't it?)   That is part of bird watching; sometimes even a short glimpse and a really bad photo makes for a wonderful day when you spot a really rare bird and a new life bird! 

 

Groove-billed Ani