I’ve just returned from a visit to the parental home in coastal Orange County California, where my mother still lives. The house is walking distance from the beach — all during the Labor Day weekend, we could smell the beach fires and hear the engines of small planes dragging ad banners low along the coast. When I was a kid, the beach was where we went to “lay out” or body surf. Now, I’m more likely to head to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve, also within a short walk, to look at birds. One of the last remaining wetlands in southern California, Bolsa Chica has been a battle ground for decades between developers, politicians, environmentalists, and citizens.

Though its current state is more stable than it was, it’s hard to believe the struggle is over, since the Preserve is still being hemmed in by huge showy homes looking down onto it from the bluffs on one side and clanking, chugging oil rigs on the other. But in between is a haven well-known to birds and birders, as well as families and walkers with (forbidden) dogs. The Preserve is in a constant state of change, not only from natural phenomena like tides and the weather, but also man-made: fairly recently a channel was constructed to open the water of the Preserve to the sea — a re-engineering of its natural daily access to fresh ocean water, instead of a sluggish exchange of greasy harbor water that worked its way through local marina channels. Observers are still evaluating the effects of this. But the terns and Black skimmers still nest on the sandy island, endangered snowy plovers have nesting areas safe from foot traffic and vehicles, and the endangered Belding’s race of the Savannah sparrow is sometimes ridiculously easy to see in the pickleweed. Small numbers of Least terns, also endangered, are harder to pick out from among the clouds of larger, skrekking Caspian, Elegant and Forster’s terns. Winter will bring ducks and grebes, and now in late summer, the shorebirds are returning, some, like a few of the dowitchers, still sporting shreds of buffy breeding plumage fresh from their arctic breeding grounds.

As havens often do, Bolsa Chica has attracted unexpected residents. For a couple of years now, birders have been watching a small number of Reddish egrets in the tidal flats — two that I know of — a species that is normally found in warmer regions. On the Bolsa Chica Conservancy‘s online bird list, the Reddish egrets rate only an “X” for “accidental”. They seem to know exactly what they’re doing, however, with their active foraging dance in which they dart and hop, holding their wings above their head, snaking their long necks forward to snatch at small fish and invertebrates from the water at their feet. You’d expect to see these guys in Louisiana, or Mexico. But here they are doing what they do like they belong here, being spied upon by scopes and long lenses, among the resident Snowy and Great egrets and Great blue herons. Like immigrants everywhere, they are sometimes subject to competitive pecks and unwelcoming charges by the locals, in the form of irritable Great Blues whose personal space is compromised.

All of Southern California has a reputation for harboring incomers from other places. The Reddish egrets are only one example. Another, new to me as a non-resident, but apparently known to local fishermen and living here for a while, are Green Sea Turtles. A news story over the Labor Day weekend was the first I’ve heard of this: a Green sea turtle was rescued from where it was trapped in a dishcarge channel in the Haynes Generating Station on the grubby and channelized San Gabriel River. Check out the excellent LA Times article for the full fascinating story, but apparently there is a handful of these big turtles living at least part of their lives in the warm waters a short distance upstream from where the San Gabriel empties into the Pacific at the border of LA and Orange Counties. Even more remarkable is that there is a large colony of these animals living in San Diego. This group numbers at least a hundred and, according to researchers, is headed up by a 570-pound matriarch they call “Wrinklebutt.” The theory is that the San Gabriel River turtle group is an outpost of Wrinklebutt’s colony. It makes them the northernmost known foraging population of Green Sea turtles in North America.

This coastal visit is well-timed for me artistically, bringing an influx of fresh ocean species, just at a time when I’m beginning work on pieces for the San Diego Bird Festival next March. So soon skimmers and terns and sea turtles will be migrating into Three Star Owl imagery, joining the desert species dwelling there already. And, maybe when I’m in San Diego, I’ll try to see Wrinklebutt and her cohorts.

One of my simple pleasures is going on early morning walks with E around the buttes in Papago Park. We can walk there from our house, and though the walks are for health, we always make note of birds and the other animals we see.

A first impression of this landscape is accurate: a worn scrap of urban desert, surrounded by buildings and golf courses. (At 1200 acres, this scrap seems to be getting smaller all the time, as the City of Phoenix doesn’t seem to be able to keep its hands to itself: even this morning we noticed a shiny chain link fence slashed across the creosote flats, closer to the butte trail than just a few days ago; a golf-course expansion, I suppose, because Phoenix doesn’t have enough acres in fairways?) I don’t have a biologist’s expertise, but the buttes and the land between them don’t seem to be a rich or terribly diverse environment. Next to the lush Zoo and wonderful Desert Botanical Garden, where the birding is always great, the part of Papago west of the parkway seems especially barren. Sometimes we only see a handful of bird species, and no mammals but other humans and their dogs (and only a few of those in our early hours). But over the years and through all seasons in all weather, we’ve discovered that there’s more in Poor Old Papago than you might expect.

This morning’s walk was a perfect example. In addition to the numerous mourning doves and house finches, there were two Loggerhead shrikes in the park, fierce “functional raptors” looking for a protein-rich breakfast like a grasshopper or small lizard. They were making their ratchety “shrike-shrike” call from the tops of the greened-up creosotes, so we heard them before we saw them, though once we got closer the shrikes’ bold gray, black and white plumage blinked in the sun. The verdins saw the shrikes too, emitting incessant alarm calls and flicking their wings.

The serious, top-order predators were out, too: a Red-tailed hawk launched itself with a cry off the rock we call “Jaws” and flew south to the biggest butte, Barnes Butte (named after Will C. Barnes who is known himself for writing a book on Arizona place names). And the ‘yotes were out: Coyotes are pretty common in the park. This morning we saw two together, an apparent family: an adult and young one, looking a bit scruffy, like the park itself. We’ve seen coyotes actually stalk dog-walkers, maybe keeping an eye on things until the other four-legs are off their patch of land. When fire engines hurtle by, the Butte “goes off” and invisible ‘yotes howl and yip until the sirens are faint.

There’s plenty for the coyotes to eat, actually, if they can catch it. Stray cats, for instance. (When we first started walking in the park, one of our landmarks was “Half-cat Stash” — a bit of feline jerky with clumped, sun-bleached pelt patches that was gradually being reduced by some not very picky predator) Also, there are Black-tailed jackrabbits. We’ve seen as many as eleven during one walk, their radiator-ears glowing pink with the low sun shining through them. Desert cotton-tails are common, too. These tough lagomorphs are numerous enough in the park so that the City has had to chicken-wire the young saguaros to keep them from being girdled by gnawing teeth. The cactus situation is at best marginal in the park: there are few new ones coming up, and some of the old saguaros are dying: one we called the “Condo” because it hosted numerous starlings and a Gila woodpecker or two just recently came down in a monsoon windstorm. Now it’s lying there rotting, gradually watering its nurse tree. Hard to believe this land was designated Papago Saguaro National Monument from 1914 until 1930, known for the stately columnar cactus. But now, Papago definitely calls out for some succulent guerilla gardening…

Even after all the walks we’ve taken In Papago Park, E and I are still seeing things for the first time, like the barrel cactus we found this summer only because the monsoon has been better than usual. Normally invisible against the gravelly soil the heads of several barrels blazed out in the washes because rain had soaked them over night and their normally dry, brown spines had taken on their true color: bright red. We know where one hedgehog cactus grows, having seen it only because it was in full bloom. There are even pincushion cactus, Mammillaria grahamii (or “mammo-grahams” as we’ve nicknamed them, Graham’s nipple cactus) tucked away on a sunny slope of the little butte. One day we hope to catch them blooming, too. Even more invisible was a Lesser nighthawk on her nest, staunchly incubating through the monsoon season, hidden in plain sight under a small creosote. We don’t know for sure if she successfully fledged her young, but we’d like to think so.  Can you find her invisibly sitting tight on her nest in the photo above (Spot the Bird)?

There are always surprises: last fall a gleaming, swift Prairie falcon lingered in the high rocks and air overhead; we watched it for two weeks before it moved on. Also, what was left of a Barn owl, abandoned on the top of a rock after it had become a meal for a Great horned owl (they’re there although we’ve never seen one — occasionally there’s a softly barred feather caught fluttering in a shrub). There are strangers, too: an exotic male zebra finch hung out with a flock of native house finches for a week or so; and nearby there’s a thriving breeding population of Budgies (parakeets) nesting in saguaro cavities.

Lodged in the cracks between Phoenix, Tempe, and Scottsdale, Papago Park may not seem a terribly wild place, but it is something very precious in the middle of the metropolitan area: open desert space in an area that’s been the residential heart of the Rio Salado settlement for thousands of years.

Poor Old Papago Park. There’s been talk of “improvement” for Papago for years. Does it need improvement? In my view “Improvement” doesn’t always include parking lots, pavement or pathways. Because the beauties and benefits of Papago are subtle and in their natural state, I fear they will be overlooked by ambitious city managers, profit-seeking developers and even well-meaning citizens eager to “improve” something that doesn’t need improvement, but rather a little appreciation for what it is.

All photos©threestarowl.com. All photos in this post taken by E. Shock in Papago Park, except the Loggerhead shrike, taken on the Margie’s Cove trail in the Maricopa Mountains.

Earlier this year, Sky Island Alliance presented their second annual Citizen Awards to people and businesses who have shown distinction in achievement, support or activism in the international environmental arena of the embattled Sonoran ecosystem. Instead of traditional trophies, SIA commissioned custom handmade plaques from Three Star Owl to honor the recipients. Each one was personalized with native species chosen for each recipient according to their field, interest, or accomplishment. Below are: Ray Carroll with Elegant trogon, Summit Hut representative with Coati, Sherry Barrett with Desert tortoise, Sergio Avila (SIA wildlife biologist), Carlos Robles and Martha Felix de Robles with Ocelot in an oak, and David Parsons with Mexican gray wolf.

The awards were thick stoneware tiles, modeled and carved in low relief and finished in mineral oxides and glazes. The project was a pleasure for me to work on for many reasons, not least because the species selected were ones I’ve been fortunate enough to see in the wild. And I was proud to have been part of the process of recognizing people making a difference in a critical effort. I hope to work with Sky Island Alliance again in the future. (My thanks to Shiloh Walkosak for finding me, everyone at SIA, and to Jessica Lamberton and Sergio Avila of SIA for sending photos.)