The Desert Gets a Very Rare Avian Visitor

This wading bird (a juvenile Northern Jacana) showed up at the Canoa Ranch pond around September 8th and stayed around for a couple days (so far, as I write this, it’s still around). So what is the big deal about this bird? Well, it is WAY north of its normal range in Mexico, and it usually is close to an ocean shoreline. So how does it wind up at one of the very scarce ponds in the Sonoran Desert? Nobody really understands why these ‘vagrants’ wind up in oddball place, but sometimes it happens. The fact that it’s a young bird is probably one of the reasons.

Word spread quickly among birders and many people have now seen and photographed this bird and no doubt it will continue to be very popular if it stays around for awhile. This was a ‘life bird’ for me - I had never seen one before, never having birded in Mexico. So this was likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me - birding-wise.

The bird is small-ish, about the size of a common shorebird everyone has seen - the Killdeer. Except the Northern Jacana has extremely long legs relative to its body, and outlandishly-sized feet. These adaptations help it wade in shallow water along the shore of bodies of water, and the huge feet allow it to walk on lily pads and other lake and pond vegetation. The next photo gives some idea of these two aspects of the bird. When it grows to adulthood, it will develop a nice copper coloration to its body and a bright yellow mark on its head.

Canoa Ranch Historical Park has become famous with birders. The ranch, which is now managed as a historical preserve by Pima County, attracts many species of birds (more than 250 have been seen and documented so far). This is because the ranch is on a flyway for migrating birds, who see the ranch pond and the trees around the old ranch buildings as a good stopover and resting point. The county has also just finished constructing a ‘cienega’ north of the pond. A cienega is a marshy area, which will also act as an oasis for resident and migrating birds. Additionally, they have removed non-native vegetation and planted a ‘pollinators garden’ which should attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bees.

Birders are looking forward to more unusual visitors down the road!

PURPLE MARTINS IN THE DESERT...!

Unexpected residents of the Sonoran Desert.

During my childhood in Pennsylvania, many people had “Martin houses” - large bird nesting boxes built like an apartment complex, since that species communal. Martins, actually a species of swallow - the largest - were prized for farms and yards because of the prodigious quantities of various insects (including mosquitos) that the birds eat, as they are insectivorous. Although their range does not completely cover the continent, they are also summer residents (and welcome ones!) along the west coast, and in the Puget Sound area where we lived for many years before moving to the desert. Sadly, as with many species, their numbers have declined over the years. And for whatever reason, in the Pacific NW, they preferred nesting in gourd-like nest boxes that were over water - often installed on pilings in salt water, for example. One speculation for the reason is that starlings, which compete with all native cavity-nesting birds, don’t like being over water and so the Martins don’t have as many problems with them. So all my experience with their nesting locations were with Martin houses in the east or gourds over water in the west. Since many insects are near water or fields, I never thought we would have resident Purple Martins in the desert. I was happily wrong!

On one of my first hikes in the desert during the summer after moving here, I heard the distinctive call of multiple Purple Martins and looked up to see a number of them flying around over the area. At first I thought they might be birds migrating through to another location. Then it became apparent there was a large group of Martins using a huge, mature Saguaro as a staging locations. So I closer and the birds were clearly using cavities in the Saguaro to roost or nest. A little research indicated that yes, the desert has resident Purple Martins, and that their favored nesting/roosting locations are mature Saguaros with plenty of nest holes previously excavated by woodpeckers. Some more recent hikes in the desert surrounding our house yielded two more colonies, both in huge Saguaros. Tucson Audubon is actually doing a program focusing on Purple Martins in the desert, which we’re going to find out more about later this week.

Although we get other swallow species migrating through the area, they are more water-oriented and so except near the few permanent ponds and lakes in the desert, we don’t see them as residents. It’s nice to have the beautiful Purple Martins in the area.

Greater Roadrunner Closeup

Previously I posted an image of a Greater Roadrunner that I was lucky to get a photo op of while starting a walk in the wash behind our house. Since they tend to be leery of people, skulky - and run quite fast - I thought that was about the best shot of one I would be able to get. Then came yesterday, and one result was the image below.

Greater Roadrunner Closeup

I was in the wash and had seen two tiny birds (Verdin, a common desert species that I will do a post on soon) foraging in a mesquite tree. They are hard to get in the open and in constant motion so I stood motionless with the camera lying in wait. And waited, and waited, and never got an opportunity for a good shot. Disappointed, I turned around (fortunately slowly) and there no more than twenty feet behind me was a Roadrunner. It was concentrating so hard on finding a lizard or other prey item to eat that it ignored me completely - maybe it was a young bird…? The camera was already on, the settings were ok and I proceeded to shoot at least 30 images while the bird stealthily went about its hunting. After deciding there was nothing on the ground to catch, it silently hopped up in the tree it was near and started carefully working its way up the tree branches. Had I not seen it jump into the tree, I never would have known it was there. It was probably looking for nestling birds, or a nest with eggs (I assume they eat eggs - I know they hunt and eat small birds, so it seems logical).

So, for the first image I worked on from the series, I decided since the bird filled the entire frame being so close that I would crop in for a ‘headshot’. Usually I include some of the habitat that the bird is in, and show the entire bird. But I may never get another shot like the ones in this series, so I gave it a go.

From a distance, the bird looks pretty drab except for the splash of color above its eye, but as you can see here, there is quite a bit of color when you see it up close.

A Skilled Raptor Visits Our Water Bubbler

We have a couple bird feeders in our back yard, which borders on a desert wash. The wash is rich with wildlife, especially this time of year when a lot of breeding and nesting activity is going on with the birds, who vocalize constantly. Mammal species are having young, and the cold-blooded lizards and snakes are now active. (One of the secrets of walking in the desert with a camera is to watch every step - not only for cactus spines, but one of our 13-15 species of rattlesnakes. Despite how much I look for them, I haven’t actually seen very many, and am wishing for more photographic opportunities.)

The accipiter family of raptors in the US includes 3 species - Cooper’s Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk and Northern Goshawk. Our most common accipiter by far in the Sonoran Desert is the Cooper’s Hawk, and my understanding is that we have one of the highest densities of Cooper’s Hawks anywhere in the country. Sharp-shinned Hawks are here as well, but much less common, and they tend to prefer more wooded environments which in the desert are higher up in elevation in the ‘sky islands’ of mountain ranges that ring the desert basins. Our house sits at about 3,000 feet, and from the back yard we can see Mount Wrightson, at 9,400+. Northern Goshawks are pretty rare wherever they are found, and in Arizona, they would be found in the northeast and eastern mountains, not where we live.

Our bird feeders are always busy with House Finches and Lesser Goldfinches, with other visits from Curve-billed Thrasher, Cactus Wren, Abert’s Towhee and other resident and migrating birds. Our yard list since moving here in February of 2019 is 54 species. The proliferation of finches at the feeders of course attracts predators, and accipiters prey consists of smaller birds.

We have a pair of Cooper’s Hawks that are deadly efficient hunters. Lately only the male has been making ambush/stealth runs on the feeders, because the female is sitting on eggs in this year’s nest, which is only about half a mile up the wash from our house. The male is dutifully catching and bringing food to her. I have found a tree near the nest where the male likes to perch and am contemplating how to get some good images before they finish raising this year’s brood.

We also have a water bubbler in the yard, designed to attract birds to drink and bathe. It is popular, especially in the early morning, and it also draws in other critters. We have a Desert Cottontail that shows up reliably every day to tank up on water.

Early the other morning, I looked out and there sitting in the water relaxing - with one foot curled up under his belly feathers, was the male Cooper’s. He obviously had missed catching a bird, but decided to stay and chill a bit. We both snapped some images of him through the glass window, and a couple came out pretty well, as you can see in the included photo.

Adult Male Cooper’s Hawk on a Rest Break

Seeing how this bird hunts at our and our neighbor’s feeders, and in the wash itself, is pretty sobering - I wouldn’t want to be a bird of prey size! This guy takes advantage of the terrain and houses like a ground-hugging fighter jet coming in for a strike. I’ve seen it come from across our road, at full speed and only maybe 4 feet off the ground, head between our house and our neighbor’s, and then at the last second deke over the brick wall between the houses and wind up right in the middle of the feeding birds with no warning at all. The birds all scatter and sometimes one doesn’t make a getaway. Hawks have to eat too. Actually, despite their skill, estimates are that perhaps only 15% of their attacks result in catching something. Meaning when momma is on the nest and young ones are on the way, dad has to be working hard all day to bring home the food! Shortly after this image was snapped, he took off to other hunting locations in the area. Hopefully soon, we’ll see awkward juvenile birds from this guy’s nest flying around trying to learn the art of hunting as well as dad and mom.

Greater Roadrunner - A 'Kooky' Bird

Many of us grew up ‘learning’ about the unique bird called a roadrunner from TV cartoons. The real thing - the Greater Roadrunner - is an iconic species of the Southwest, including the Sonoran Desert. It is quite unique in its lifestyle, and its unusual behavior (in the bird world anyway) is no doubt why it became a popular cartoon figure. First of all, here is a recent image I shot of one right behind our house in the morning as I walked into the wash to photograph birds and other critters.

The Greater Roadrunner is in the Cuckoo family, and as the name implies, is almost always seen on the ground, although it can fly just fine when needed. It is FAST when running, and has to be due to its favorite menu item - lizards. Lizards are plentiful in the Sonoran Desert - both in number of species and numbers of individuals, and as such they are prey items for many predators. The Roadrunner is chief among them. Lizards are very watchful and very fast - especially the Zebra-tailed Lizard, which is everywhere in the sandy arroyo/wash behind our house. Yet Roadrunners catch them without much problem, and other species as well.

But other items are on the menu as well, and like most successful predators, the Roadrunner adapts to the situation at hand. We have a recycling ‘bubbler’ in our back yard to provide water for birds and other critters, and one of our local Roadrunners quickly decided this presented an opportunity. It (the genders are alike so I don’t know which it is) quickly figured out it could hide behind a short fence, wait for birds (mostly House Finches and Lesser Goldfinches) to be drinking or bathing and not paying enough attention, and then would streak out of hiding like a rocket and go for one of the birds. We have a motion-sensing camera in the yard, so every time this happened, we had a clear video record of it. It got four House Finches before the yard birds adapted their behavior and became more watchful. (Well, that and the fact that my wife has taken to going out and shooing the Roadrunner away when it’s hanging around. She doesn’t buy my logic that everybody has to eat.) For awhile, the Roadrunner even hid in the bushes under our hummingbird feeder and would jump up and attempt to grab the hummers. This wasn’t so successful, so that behavior didn’t continue.

Some goofy behavior seems to be part of the Roadrunner’s repertoire as well. Our neighbor had a Roadrunner visit his house on a daily basis when it was being constructed. The bird would come inside and wander around, looking for who knows what - bugs? - up until the house was built. And beyond. When the temperature is amenable, our neighbors leave their back patio doors open to the outside air. The Roadrunner then proceeded to come right into the house on a couple of occasions, and one time, they even found the bird relaxing in the front seat of their sports car convertible in the garage. Maybe it really wanted to go BEEP-BEEP as its alter ego was famous for.

It’s just really nice to have at least one of these entertaining birds around the neighborhood, although the lizard population suffers a bit as a result…!

Desert Butterflies

One of many wildlife surprises in the Sonoran Desert is the variety of butterflies. I am primarily a ‘bird nerd’ but since becoming a docent at ASDM (the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum) I’ve been working on getting more familiar with other categories of critters. Being into photography, butterflies are fun to shoot, in some respects being the complete opposite of birds. Often birds are far away and even with long lenses it is usually quite a challenge to get an excellent image. Butterflies can be approached much closer than birds, although most of them are quite nervous fliers and sometimes it seems they will never stop and alight on something. How do they get all the energy to do that, fueled just on nectar?

Anyway, butterflies are starting to be a lot more common around the house and in the wash near us, as the temperatures rise. Here are three recent images I was able to get of three different species that frequent southern Arizona and the Sonoran Desert.

Pipevine Swallowtail

The Swallowtails are large butterflies and many of us grew up seeing whatever version of that family was in our area. The Pipevine Swallowtail has a wide range across the US - in the west it is found in the southwest, but in the Midwest and East its range expands northward and in places makes it almost to Canada. In our area, this species has 3 broods per year, so they can be seen throughout much of the year. This lovely specimen visited the Gooding’s Verbena in our front yard and I was fortunately where I saw it arrive and grabbed the camera. It turned out to be a cooperative subject.

Giant Swallowtail

This beautiful critter also showed up in our yard, this time the back yard, and once again headed for the Gooding’s Verbena (we asked our landscaper to put in native plants that attracted birds and butterflies, and this one is a major hit with the butterflies.) This is another common species, though in our area, only the southern half of the state. In the eastern half of the country it ranges much further north. The coloration of this critter is interesting. The wings are mostly yellow on the bottom, with some nice color highlights, but with much more black on the top of the wings.

And finally…

Common Buckeye

Just two days ago I went for a walk in the wash behind the house (where hardly anyone ever goes, so ‘social distancing’ was easy) and got some shots of birds, lizards and a poor shot of a smaller unidentified butterfly. Almost back to the street, I saw a butterfly flitting around and it landed on the rock riprap wall in the storm ditch that I was walking in. With nicely matching colors, no less!

This one is a Common Buckeye, with those beautiful buckeye ‘eyes’ on the wings. I was able to snap a few pictures before it took off. Common is really appropriate in the title of this butterfly, as its range covers every continental state except Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota.

Slowly, the life list of butterflies seen in our yard and in the adjoining wash is growing, and I’m looking forward to shooting more of them.

Antelope Jackrabbit

The Sonoran Desert has an amazing variety of animal species, with a wide range of habitats. Even though the Sonoran Desert is ‘lush’ by comparison to the other three North American deserts (Mojave, Chihuahuan, Great Basin) it is still amazing to see the animal species that have adapted to and are thriving in a pretty dry environment. Our area of the Sonoran Desert (referred to as the Arizona Uplands) has at least two species of rabbits in it. Well, technically one rabbit species and a hare species. The Desert Cottontail looks pretty much like cottontail rabbits you would see all over much of the US. However, we also have at least one species of hare - the Antelope Jackrabbit. A couple days ago, two of these huge, gangly ‘rabbits’ surprised me when I was walking in the desert behind our house looking for birds to photograph. They were cooperative subjects, as shown below.

If you are used to cottontail rabbits, seeing one of these gigantic - by comparison - rabbits for the first time is quite a shock. The Antelope Jackrabbit is the biggest jackrabbit species and can weigh up to 9 pounds - that is a BIG rabbit. Depending on how you measure it, they’re probably two to three times the size of a cottontail - especially when taking their long legs and huge ears into account.

We have LOTS of coyotes in our area and hear them yipping up a typical early or late chorus a large percentage of nights - sometimes within feet of our back yard. With so many coyotes running around, it’s amazing there are any rabbits left at all, whether Desert Cottontail or Antelope Jackrabbit. In the case of our jackrabbit, maybe it partly has to do with the long breeding season that can produce four litters per year.

When I’ve seen these jackrabbits, they seem slow and deliberate, hopping casually about looking for browse. But the long legs give them options for not getting caught by a coyote, bobcat or mountain lion (yes, we have the occasional cougar that wanders into our area from the nearby mountains). They can bound good distances erratically and are fast over short distances at least. Still, I wouldn’t want to be in their part of the food chain.

The laughably long ears serve another purpose besides enhancing hearing. As you can actually see in the image, their ears have blood vessels running through them. This allows the ears to act as a radiator to help regulate the jackrabbit’s body temperature from overheating. I have seen Desert Cottontails scrape a shallow depression in the dirt (in the shade) and then flatten themselves out over it since the ground is cooler than the air, and they lose some of their body heat to cool down. I don’t know whether jackrabbits do the same, but all successfully adapted desert species have to deal with this issue in the hot summers. The ears help in this regard.

There are two other jackrabbit species which could possibly be found in our area, and hopefully I identified this species correctly. The other two possibilities are Black-Tailed Jackrabbit and White-Sided Jackrabbit. I can definitely say this is not a Black-Tailed - although it’s not visible in this photo, when the rabbits hopped off, their hindquarters were very white, standing out almost like a whitetail deer’s ‘flag’ (tail) when it sprints away from danger. Plus the ears of the Black-Tailed are darker than Antelope. White-Sided Jackrabbits prefer higher elevation grasslands and tend to avoid areas with trees and shrubs. The range of both the White-Sided and Antelope Jackrabbits barely extends north into the US - Arizona in the case of the Antelope and New Mexico for the White-Sided. Their primary range is in Mexico.

Hopefully I’ll have some additional opportunities to photograph these interesting critters, although they are mostly crepuscular (early morning, evening) so seeing this pair during the day was definitely a bit of good luck.

Tumacacori Mission - National Historical Park

Southern Arizona is full of history. Despite being a desert, albeit a ‘lush’ one by desert standards, it has the distinction of having been inhabited and farmed longer than virtually any other place in the US. The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore the area and claim it for Spain. In addition to military people, the exploration expeditions included religious people - priests, etc. - whose job it was to convert the native peoples to Catholicism and provide education to make them subjects of the king.

Explorations in the 1600’s and 1700’s occurred throughout Mexico and what is now the southwest US states, and a key aspect of these explorations was to establish complexes around the centerpiece - a mission church. In addition to the church, a mission would typically have quarters for military men, stables, land for growing crops and places of trade. In some cases, local Indians moved to the mission complex as well. The area of Tumacacori at the time of the missions was watered by the perennial Santa Cruz River, which borders the mission grounds only a short walk away. In our current time, the Santa Cruz for most of its length is dry except following summer monsoon rains for which southern Arizona is noted.

The missions of the exploration and Spanish settlement era were showpieces of architecture and wealth compared to anything else that existed at the time. Church interiors were decorated with fine paintings and statuary, with a soaring domed roof overhead, and must have been incredibly impressive to see for the first time. The Tumacacori mission is now managed as a National Historical Park. The church has been partially restored, but the interior, although walkable and interesting, lacks the fine art and decoration of its heyday. (Not too far to the north, the mission church at San Xavier del Bac on the other hand, is spectacularly restored and still serves as an active church, although it is closed as of this writing due to the COVID-19 virus.) It serves local residents, mostly the Tohono O’odham tribal nation, second largest tribe in the US behind only the Navajo nation.

The grounds include a visitor center (also temporarily closed, though as of this writing the grounds remained open) that is well-stocked with books about the area’s history, flora and fauna. The mission church, of course, behind which is a walled-in cemetery. There are a number of graves in the cemetery, but most of them are completely unmarked. Over the years, the area was also used for livestock and other things, so the current graves, though old, are not original residents of the complex. Partial remains of a storage room and a house structure, plus a Tohono O’odham ramada, built with traditional desert materials, are also available to see. Open grounds to the north of the buildings contain a picnic area and are the location of an annual Fiesta.

The mission complex is a photographer’s dream location. The old architecture, partial decayed buildings and walls, and the lonely cemetery with unknown graves provide a lot of subjects. One of the pages on this website contains a few images I shot to try to capture some of the age and historical feel of the mission.

In the image below, I tried to capture the feel of the old cemetery in a monochrome photo. The wooden cross contains no name, and except for the rocks piled on the grave is the only indication of a burial. The twisted old tree and its gnarled shadows on the wall add to the mood. The empty hollow in the wall behind the grave probably contained religious statuary or relics but they were taken or destroyed a long time ago. In first seeing this site, I wondered - Who is buried here? What was their life like? It was surely much different than what we experience today.

An anonymous gravesite in the far corner of the cemetery.

Skulky Sparrows

I completed Seattle Audubon’s master birder program in 2008, which was a great experience and really increased my ID abilities and knowledge of the natural history of birds. That having been said, birding is such a huge and challenging undertaking, that species ID is always a challenge and successful ID of every bird you see is never possible. This is especially true for me since we moved to SE Arizona in February of 2019 - the habitat, and therefore the bird species, are quite different than bird species in the Pacific NW where we lived for 40 years before moving to the desert. Of course, lots of species seen in the NW pass through SE Arizona in migration (both spring and fall) and a few NW species are also resident down here. Birding by ear has gone from a strength to having to really start over learning the vocalizations of the common species down here. It will be awhile until I know the local species as well as I did the PNW species.

One group of birds which is particularly challenging to ID (and photograph) is the sparrow family. There are a lot of sparrow species, and to non-birders (including beginning birders) they look almost identical - they’re called LBJ’s or LBB’s by some folks (little brown jobs, or little brown birds). Actually, sparrows can be identified fairly easily IF you get a really good look at a bird, or manage to take a decent photo. Because sparrows tend to be nervous, shy and often forage in grass or thick vegetation, getting a good look or a good photo is not an easy task.

Today I went out in the morning with a new camera, not for birding particularly, and stopped along Whitehouse Canyon Road (the road to birders’ world-famous Madera Canyon) to get some landscape shots. It was relatively early and there were chips, chirps and songs happening, so I started to look for birds - despite having only brought my camera and no binoculars (something one shouldn’t admit to fellow birders). Birds, including a number of sparrows, were flitting back and forth but either out of decent camera range or immediately diving into the foot-high grass and desert shrubs to feed. I managed to get shots of two species of sparrows with good enough detail for a positive ID and I’ve posted them below.

Vesper Sparrow

This image is of a Vesper Sparrow, a species that winters in our area but moves north in the spring to breed. The distinctive field marks in this image are the prominent white eye ring and the streaking on the upper breast with an unmarked belly.

Rufous-winged Sparrow

The Rufous-winged Sparrow is a year-round resident species in our portion of the Sonoran Desert, but this area is about the only place in the US that this species can be found. So…it is a highly sought-after species for birders visiting from other areas of the country or the world. I’ve found them hard to see, even though they are quite commonly heard singing in the spring - including from our back yard. This species looks similar to Chipping Sparrow, but this photo (though not the sharpest one and certainly not an art piece!) shows some of the key field marks. The namesake rufous wings (and shoulder patch) cannot be seen here, and aren’t all that obvious to my eyes anyway even when seen. Here you can see that the eyestripe is dark (almost black) in front of the eye, but turns reddish brown (rufous) behind the eye. Chipping Sparrow has a dark black eyestripe both in front and back of the eye. Also here you can see a bicolored bill - the lower mandible lighter than the upper. Additionally, you can see with a close look that the legs here are yellowish. Chipping Sparrow has pink legs. Another similar species found in the SW and parts of Texas is the Rufous-crowned Sparrow. That species has darker gray underparts and a darker malar stripe (the stripe leading from the corner of the bill down along the side of the throat).

I’ll keep trying to get better images of all the desert species as I get more time in the area.

Welcome to my blog!

After living in Washington state for 40 years, my wife and I moved to southern Arizona in early 2019. We are both docents at the incredible Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (www.desertmuseum.org) and absolutely love the Sonoran Desert. I’ve done a lot of photography - birds, other critters, landscape and some street - for a couple decades, and am finding the desert to be a great source of material. Photos of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona will be the topic of this blog, and will cover flora, fauna, people and places. Hopefully my love for this area will show in my images and posts!

This image was taken at an annual area fiesta featuring area (both Arizona and Sonora, Mexico) culture, vendors and events. This Mexican dance troupe was outstanding.