Fortunately, I was able to hook up with V on her scouting trip this morning, and this is where we went: the dawn lift-off of Sandhill cranes just south of the town of Willcox, AZ.

Above is a photo of a small fraction of the cranes flying out from the ice-crusted ponds where they spent the night — something like 6 or 8 thousand roost at this place.  Dos Cabezas peak in the Chiricahuas is the twinned topography in the distance.  The sound the cranes make is as much a part of the spectacle as the sight of thousands of birds in wheeling lines overhead.  It’s an amazing noise, which I haven’t found an adequate way of describing.  A croaky sort of rattly trumpeting, continuous and amplified and multiplied by thousands of syrinxes, it’s mixed with the baby-piping calls of immature birds urging their parents to wait up, distinct above the stuttery honks of the adults.  (I’ve got a great video clip with the sound of the lift-off that I’m currently unable to get the editor to accept; I’ll post as soon as that struggle is over…)

An immature Golden eagle momentarily fools us all into thinking it’s intent on a crane on the fly, but it turns out to be adolescent high jinx and it perches on a power tower instead, after creating a fuss in the air, and setting most of the remaining cranes into flight.  Earlier, a handful of Chihuahan ravens hadn’t done as efficient a job of agitating everyone.

The cranes fly out to feed in the stubbly fields of Sulphur Springs Valley during the day: here’s a telephoto shot of a group working in a field with an irrigation pivot looking like a fence behind them.  They move slowly but steadily as a group, pecking the ground and occasionally each other, challenging breast to breast and vocalizing if necessary.  An occasional stick is brandished boldly, and there is some hopping about, with stick.  The immatures have brownish crowns, the adults a bright red heart-shaped “shield” between the base of their bill and their crowns.  Not visible in the picture, a big Ferruginous hawk lurks over the crowd, perhaps waiting for the probing bills to stir up a rodent, and American kestrels follow the foraging flocks as well. The cranes themselves often seem to follow the field equiptment, poking through freshly turned soil for goodies.  Horned larks work the furrows too, a Loggerhead shrike emits a variety of calls from a power line, and Eastern meadowlarks in large numbers stalk purposefully over the clods.  All of these birds, like the farmers, make their living off the soil of the Sulphur Springs Valley, and to some degree their numbers and even presence are due to agriculture.

In Willcox,  Land of the Cranes, they are everywhere: back at the motel, a solitary crane poses obligingly on the commode, but its stately blue silence has little in common with the mobile, gabbling gray thousands we’ve just witnessed.

For those of you within range of southeastern Arizona, consider visiting the annual Wings Over Willcox Nature Festival this weekend.  Held in the historic community of Willcox, this event celebrates the yearly return of tens of thousands of Sandhill cranes to the Sulphur Springs Valley in southeastern Arizona.  The rich Chihuahuan desertscrub and grasslands are slung between the Chiricahua Mountains and the Dragoon Mountains.  Patched with mesquite bosques, farmland, rangeland, and dotted with pools and ponds of semi-permanent and seasonal water, the Sulphur Springs Valley is winter home not only to the cranes, but to extraordinary numbers of birds of prey, sparrows and longspurs, waterfowl, shore birds including upland varieties, and other bird species people may not commonly associate with our region.  Scaled quail, Eastern meadowlarks, Bendire’s thrashers and Mountain plovers lurk in the wintery fields along with more expected Roadrunners and Gambel’s quail.  It’s a land of agricultural heritage — hydroponics and hay, and ranching, too.

This close to the event, many of the fieldtrips are filled, but check at the registration desk in the Community Center for last minute cancellations.  Also, many of the sights, notably the crane lift-off at Whitewater Draw and elsewhere along the farm roads in the Valley, are something you can do on your own.  The WOW organizers can give advice on where and when to go.

This year’s festival is the sixteenth annual WOW, and it’s the second year Three Star Owl has been in Willcox for the event, offering Arizona-specific table wares and sculptural items both funky and sensible.

Come visit “The Owl” at:

Booth 12, Willcox Community Center, 312 West Stewart Street, Willcox, AZ

Friday 16 Jan: 10am -7pm

Saturday 17 Jan: 8am – 5pm

Sunday 18 Jan: 8am – 3.30pm

more info at: wingsoverwillcox.com

Right: Small Turkey Vulture “Bottle” with detachable, posable head.

(3.75″ ht, $52)

Bird photograpy by Ed Bustya, “Sandhill Cranes taking flight”.

Meet Miss Thang.  She is a female Costa’s hummingbird (Calypte costae), and unlike her purple-mustachioed male counterpart, she’s a plain green-gray above, and a plain gray-white below, with a chunky round body, almost no tail, and no neck at all.  She holds territory right outside our front door, as Queen of the Desert Garden.  The garden has many attributes valuable to a hummer: twiggy mesquites for roosting, a many-pointed DeSmet agave for perching, chuparosas with long-season blooms to feed upon, a freebie sugar-water feeder under the porch, and best of all, prime position from which to attract a showy male Costa’s who does looping, zizzing display flights for her each morning.  Although Miss Thang’s appearance is subdued, her personality isn’t.  She holds this valuable, resource-rich territory against all comers, including resident male Anna’s who are both brash and bigger, the summer tourists like Black-chinned hummingbirds, and any other hummers who may try to kype a slurp from the feeder.  The Gila woodpeckers are too big to chase off, and the Verdins seem to come and go with impunity, but other hummers at the feeder are given short shrift.  Speedy tail chases through the mesquite are frequent, although peevish scolding from a perch sometimes inches above the ground are often sufficient to rout invaders.  Her favorite perch from which to keep an eye on her real estate is a devil’s claw and obsidian wind chime, situated under the porch overhang directly outside the front door, shaded in the mid-day warmth, and dry in the rain.  At this time of year, when the door is open most of the day, we can see her perched alertly on the point of the devil’s claw for hours, spinning slowly as the chime turns in the breeze, chattering indignantly when another hummer flies through, or sallying forth to escort strangers right out of the yard.

Costa’s are desert hummingbirds.  They range from southern California, across the low deserts of Arizona, into Mexico.  The sources I’ve checked supply varying info about the yearly movements of Costa’s, giving an impression of the need for more research.  Some experts report they winter just south of our border with Mexico, others say the birds stay year-round in the low desert, some that they winter in the ‘burbs and breed in the less developed areas of the deserts; others just assert that their distribution is not well known.  In our yard in some years, Costa’s seem to be present in each month, with the largest number of individuals observed between June and December.  Some years they seem to disappear around the New Year and are scarce until late spring.  Now that we’ve packed the yard with hummer-friendly flowers (the photo above is Miss Thang’s demesne in full spring bloom) like chuparosa (Justicia californica), Mexican honeysuckle, (Justicia spicigera), Fairy dusters (Calliandra spp.), Desert lavender (Hyptis emoryi), native penstemons, various aloes, and sugar-water feeders, we seem to see more birds more of the year.

There’s been a female Costa’s hummer holding our front-garden territory year-round for at least two years.  We have no way of knowing for sure that it’s always Miss Thang, but of course it’s possible — it even seems likely.  We suspect she nests nearby — I’ve seen her gathering spider-webs in her beak — but have never discovered a nest. (Each year we do see young-of-the-year Costa’s in the yard, but we don’t know where they hatched.)

The yard also hosts glorious males, staking out other food-plant and feeder-related territories.  In past years, a Little-leaf Palo Verde was favored by a bird we called “Cornerhead” because his gorget went from scraggly sideburns to full-blown Yosemite Sam whiskers over the summer into fall. This is his picture on the right.  This year, there’s a long-mustached male (it may be Miss Thang’s suitor) under the pine/palo verde complex shading an outdoor table.  He “sings” (an almost inaudibly high-pitched descending sibilance) and gnats under the branches, keeping interlopers off the feeder there, then withdraws to the thorny interior of a nearby lemon in the middle of the day.  He “sings” from there, too, invisibly in the deep shade which is the only reason we know he’s in there.

Etymology…

…of the scientific name of Costa’s hummingbird, Calypte costae, is less than satisfying.  On the genus, Calypte, Choate, in the Dictionary of American Bird Names, can’t do any better than “Greek, a proper name of unknown significance”.  If he were alive, Gould could probably give a better explanation as to why he chose this genus for the bold Anna’s and Costa’s hummers.  I would suggest that Gould had in mind the adjective καλυπτή, from the verb καλύπτειν, to cover (with a thing).  The adjective means “enfolding”, connoting a veiled or mantled quality, possibly referring to the gorget that covers the entire crown and throat of hummers in this genus.  As for the species, costae, that was given in honor of Louis Marie Pantaleon Costa, Marquis de Beau-Regard, which early 19th century French nobleman had an “imposing” collection of deceased hummingbird specimens.  Merde, alors.

Photos: All photos by A. Shock, Three Star Owl.  The odd quality of the first photo of Miss Thang is due to the image being shot through an old-fashioned heavy metal security screen.

Here is an image of a Costa’s hummingbird mug from Three Star Owl.  The interior is a beautiful rich mulberry, the glaze color I can manage closest to the color of a male Costa’s gorget.

A couple of mornings ago, we saw our first Cooper’s hawk of the season, swooping nimbly around the big backyard mesquite in an unsuccessful attempt at snagging a dove or finch from the feeders under the tree. It lit on the utility pole in the alley and, having an itchy face, primly scratched itself with a big, bird-catching foot.

Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) are accipiters, a group of bird-eating hawk species characterized by medium to small size, spry flight (the better to capture other birds with), short rounded wings and a long tail useful for steering in flight. They inhabit a broad geographic area primarily in the lower 48 states, and a wide range of habitats, including temperate woodland, mesquite bosques, cottonwood stream-sides, as well as neighborhoods and parks. Cooper’s hawks are the most frequently encountered accipiter in Arizona.

If you put out a bird feeder for songbirds, you’re also feeding Cooper’s hawks (and their smaller relative, the Sharp-shinned hawk). Not because they eat seed, of course, but because they eat seed-eaters, like the finches and sparrows that stuff themselves at well-stocked feeders. Our yard hosts Cooper’s hawks most often during migration and in winter, when they lurk inconspicuously in the lower branches of trees, waiting for unaware prey to come within range. All accipiters are capable of tail-chasing smaller birds skilfully through foliage, and take prey either on the ground or in mid-air (see fierce foot above). It’s not uncommon for us to find a Cooper’s hawk under the canopy of the big mesquite on a chilly winter morning with breakfast in its fist, or a feather pool on the ground under where one has roosted and plucked its meal. They favor avian prey, but will take anything they can get, including rodents, invertebrates, reptiles, etc.

Although the strong early morning light in the upper photograph makes it difficult to see, the reddish barring on our recent hawk’s breast and belly means it’s an adult; an immature would have brown dots and streaks instead. Its gray back shows it’s a male; the larger females are brownish above. Cooper’s have fierce red eyes and beetling brows, which give them a “You talkin’ to me?” sort of look.

Photos: top, E. Shock. Right: a very clear photo of an adult Cooper’s from T. Beth Kinsey’s Firefly Forest showing an excellent assortment of field-marks for the species: contrasting dark cap, red barred breast, bright yellow legs and barred tail with relatively wide white terminal band.

Etymology

In Latin, accipiter means “hawk”, from the verb accipere, which means “to take” as in “taking prey”, like the word “raptor”. The species name, cooperii, is named after ornithologist William C. Cooper (1798-1864), a New York scientist who described the Evening Grosbeak.  In places where their ranges overlap, such as northern Arizona and New Mexico, a Cooper’s hawk would love to eat an Evening grosbeak.

There is a gap in Three Star Owl postings between Cranky Owlet hears autumn and the Canyon Wren post. This is because for nearly two weeks I was in Mexico, looking at birds. Though the trip had long been planned and paid for, it was a strange thing to be doing while the US economy was falling apart. I was out of the country during the initial flap while the bailout was being tussled over, while the market was first plunging, while the vice presidential candidates were debating. These serious events made looking for birds seem both frivolous and fundamental simultaneously. Frivolous because spending money on vacation travel in a time of economic uncertainty seems unwise and even trivial. Fundamental because, well, the birds were still living their lives, existing in their environments as usual, evading predators, searching for food, migrating thousands of miles to distant wintering grounds, and observing this was a connection to an elemental reality.

The group I was with was traveling in the Mexican state of Veracruz to see, among other things, the spectacular flights of north American birds of prey funneled along the Gulf Coast of Mexico, the famous so-called Rio de Rapaces. Osprey, Turkey vultures, Broad-winged hawks, Swainson’s hawks, Mississippi kites, Peregrine falcons, Merlins, and others, as well as non-raptors such as American white pelicans, Scissor-tailed flycatchers, Wood storks, and Anhingas swirl overhead in dynamic kettles, spiraling upward on thermals, rising like litter in a dust-devil until they are high enough to stream outward in a south-bound line, some to Central America, others like the Swainson’s hawk, all the way to central South America. Below, their vast exodus is mirrored by the southward movement of songbirds, some nearly at ground level: warblers, thrushes, shorebirds, flycatchers, dickcissels, vireos, grosbeaks, and other songbirds, heading southward mostly at night, stopping to rest and feed during the day in the resource-rich coastal plains, transitional foothills, and tropical forests of the moist state of Veracruz.

These are birds that we are accustomed to thinking of, imprecisely, as “ours”. They are ours, in a sense, because they breed in various parts of the United States and Canada. But for more than half the year, they live in regions closer to the equator, Mexico, Central, and South America, which countries have at least as great a “claim” to the birds as “we” do. They belong to both northern and southern America: this is a hemispheric, in some cases even global, avian economy, in which birds go when and where there is a living to be made, whether the seasonal draw is fruit, seeds, insects, other birds to eat, or survivable temperatures.

At that time, watching CNN in English on a hotel lobby TV hearing US announcers and US politicians expound, it was easy to think of all the economic turbulence as a US problem, with the rest of the world watching from a distance. That was until the the day before we left, when the peso, after a decade of stability at 10 to the American dollar, fell nearly 40 per cent in one day, largely because of the drop in the price of oil. Suddenly, like the movement of birds across the Americas, everything seemed closely related after all.

For the Pronatura Veracruz October 2008 actual day-by-day count of raptors seen, click here.

For an excellent read on the astounding fact and feat of avian migration, try Scott Weidensaul’s “Living on the Wind: across the hemisphere with migratory birds”. He’ll make you realize that migration is an even more amazing phenomenon than it seems. Chapter 5, Rivers of Hawks, is specifically on the Veracruz migration and its fairly recent discovery. As for learning about global economics, you’re on your own. I think we all need to start from scratch, at this point.

Photos: Top, (A. Shock), mural of a Broadwinged hawk and birdcensuser motif on the parapet wall of the Pronatura Hawkwatch site on the roof of the Hotel Bienvenidos, Cardel, Veracruz. Center: kettle of raptors, photo pinched from the site of the North American Ornithological Conference 2006, because I couldn’t get my camera to focus on all those little specks. Below: Osprey from National Park Service Padre Island website.

There are wrens in our desert world. Big, raucous, busy Cactus wrens are always here. And there are wrens that pass through: eye-browed and long-tailed Bewick’s wrens in spring and fall; a Rock wren usually comes around a few times in the winter, and even a House wren once, on its way to its breeding grounds uphill from here.

Today we had a new-for-the-yard visitor: a Canyon wren “jeeting” around on the back porch. It was early morning, and we were up for our Papago Park walk, but before we left I spotted a small dark form flitting in and out of small spaces under the bentwood rocker. At first I thought it might be a rodent, but after better looks, it proved to be a Canyon wren, its cinnamon and gray back and white throat clear even in the early light. It was actively foraging first on the canes of the chair, and then between the flower pots by the pool.

Canyon wrens live in arid places, but usually not in lowland deserts. They are characteristic denizens of precipitous canyon terrains in higher elevations, like the Mogollon Rim or the Grand Canyon, the Superstition Mountains, and such hard-surfaced vertical spaces as those, where their clear descending call rolls down the rock, and absolutely means “Desert Mountains” to many of us who live or visit there. Perhaps there’s a downward movement of a small percentage of the birds from higher elevations for winter, so some birds must pass through occasionally, but it’s a bird we’ve neither seen nor heard in our yard before, nor in Papago Park, where the buttes provide habitat more like what it would naturally occupy.

Canyon wrens are structurally specialized for probing stony crevices for delicacies: their bill is long and straight, and according to Sibley, their spine is attached to the skull at the back, instead of from underneath, which gives the small bird both maximum probing capacity and a nearly constant upward-tilt to its head.

Amazingly — it’s a very active subject — E managed to get these two photos of this morning’s bird, a bit blurry but very identifiable. The last we saw of it was its little rusty tail disappearing into the dark spiny interior of the Mexican fan palm. Then we lost track of its “jeet” call, and we didn’t see it again.

For the record, this week in October seems to be one each year when it’s possible to find species on the move: last year, this was the part of the month when an Ovenbird, a tiny, unexpected out-of-range thrush-like warbler made a brief appearance under the backyard mesquite, as if it belonged there. White-crowned sparrows have also recently returned for their winter stay, making themselves known by their characteristic and pleasing song, along with the male Red-winged blackbirds, who trickle in a few at a time and stay until spring.

To hear a Canyon wren sing go to ASU’s Ask a Biologist and under “Sound files” click on “click to open” then click on the right-pointing triangle to play.

Photos by E. Shock.

On Sunday, Aug 31 2008, while birding in the middle of the Civil War (or at least a re-enactment of it), I saw a sandy-beige bird feeding on the lawn at the edge of a brushy area in Huntington Beach Central Park. It was consorting with two typically-plumaged California towhees, and it appeared to be identical to them in everything but color. The entire bird was buffy, including flight and tail feathers, with no darker brown “towhee-colored” feathers on it, and was paler on the breast and underside. Its bill was pinkish-gray. I got good looks at the bird, with and without binoculars before it flew up into a small tree about 25 feet away, where it perched for a minute, making a sharp chip note that was towhee-like. Though it was partially concealed in the branches, it was possible to get a couple of digital images. This is the best one, slightly cropped to make the bird larger in the frame. I believe it is an Isabelline California towhee.

Perhaps this aberrant-plumaged individual is well-known to local birders (I’m from out-of-state); it certainly stood out against the green lawn, and was very much brighter in tone than the other typical, subdued California towhees it was with.

Other than an absurd number of Orange-crowned warblers and the previously mentioned Civil War encampment, it was the only notable sighting of the morning. The Audubon group (LA?) we met leaving as we came in were off to Bolsa Chica because nothing much was up in the Park, perhaps because of the cannon and rifle-fire?

As a born Californian, I will refrain from making any blond remarks and simply wish the bird success in evading accipiters, feral cats, and black-powder firearms.

Incidentally, here is an explantaion for the color term “Isabelline” meaning dun or dirty beige: “The name of Isabelline, this grayish-yellow colour comes from the colour of the underwear of Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of King Philip II of Spain who at the siege of Ostend vowed not to change her underwear until the city was captured. The siege lasted for three years so the colour of her underwear must have been truly grayish-yellow (isabelline) when the city was finally taken.” I cannot confirm accuracy, only cite internet source.

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.