On the Wing

Have you ever heard of a canoe hike? A what, you ask? In a canoe hike, you canoe or kayak for a while, on the Ohio River in this instance, then pull ashore to go hiking, specifically for fossils.

In August, the Army Corps of Engineers closes all gates on the dam, and the water is lower than it gets any other time of the year. I often wonder how these trees at the river's edge survive at all, since the soil washes away, leaving only roots.

My job on Saturday morning, was to take pictures of the boaters. However, I got more involved with photos of the birds flying overhead! Fancy that! Our Osprey pair fledged several young this year, although I don't know how many. One of them flew over as I awaited the canoes and kayaks.

Double Crested Cormorants are common residents on the river. In the water all you see are their snake-like heads. Come fall migration, we will count 500-700 of them at a time sitting on the wall of McAlpine Dam.

This one flapped a while on the water as the canoe neared, then took off. They have to get a running start to actually lift off the water. Canada Geese are gathering in flocks to feed at the river, and they take off with their usual chatter.

My favorite soaring birds, however, are the vultures. They sit on the bare rocks during the morning, cleaning up any fish washed ashore. By 11:30, the sun has warmed the rocks enough to create thermals, and all the vultures take off at one time. When I enlarged this Vulture photo, I found another bird flying above it. Click to enlarge it. I feel pretty certain from the silhouette, that this is one of our Peregrine Falcons. What a lucky shot! You can't shoot photos and count at the same time, but there must have been at least 75 birds lifting off for the day.

The swoop and soar, and manage to not run into each other as they ascend the thermal.

I confidently told another volunteer at the Falls that these were all Black Vultures, since we saw black heads and white at the wing tips. I wondered where the Turkey Vultures were. On closer examination, though, I think some of them were juvenile Turkey Vultures. They also have black heads, but their tails are longer. Still no adults though...

When I played with the lighting in Photoshop, I also saw silver along the trailing wing edges. So I could be wrong about any individual vulture here. This Saturday, September 4, is International Vulture Awareness Day. Last year I made a special post for Vulture Day, but this may be it for this year. Raptor Rehab will be taking some Turkey Vultures to the Falls for Vulture Day, so I will participating in a new way this year! A young Red Tailed Hawk has taken up residence at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve, and soared over the mansion this morning, searching the fields for breakfast.

His tail has not developed the red coloring characteristic of the adult yet.

Hawk Stalk

Saving the best for last, I headed out to stalk hawks today with Sheri Williamson and Tom Woods of the Southeast Arizona Bird Observatory. I know a lot of knowledgeable birders, but they were absolutely outstanding in this field. That's a literal statement, because we spent the day going from one farmer's field to another to find our hawks. Sheri taught us how to distinguish one hawk from another - Coopers from Sharp Shinned, for example, and all the different color morphs of the Red Tailed hawk. Red Tail - light morph Red Tail - dark morph We found over 50 Red Tails, including a beautiful Dark Morph. Sheri is my kind of birder. She jumps up and down shouting "Ooh, ooh, OOH!" just as I do, when she finds something exciting. I told her my husband gets irritated when I do this, and she says Tom reacts the same way. We decided that all the best birders get speechless when they are passionate about finding a bird! Unfortunately, the best birds were across the field, or up in the tops of a tree surrounded by branches, so I don't have a lot of sharp pictures today. Our first stop was a plowed field, where at least 12 Red Hawks perched in trees or the irrigation pipes. Four Ferruginous hawks stood on the ground listening for gophers. Sheri says they hunt by sound more than sight. A juvenile Bald Eagle joined the crowd with his support group, the Ravens. Anywhere the Eagle went the Ravens went too. (Sounds like football, doesn't it?) Two younger Ferruginous hawks perched on the same phone pole, and tried to stare each other into going someplace else.

Our findings weren't limited to raptors, although that was my favorite part. At a lake before a dairy cattle factory, we found both Snow Geese and Ross' Geese. The Ross' have much smaller bills and a forehead. The lake at the power plant, next to the Sandhill Crane viewing area, hosted four (count 'em) Tundra Swans! This is the real Swan Lake, as they dipped their heads in synchronized swimming from one side of the lake to the other. Ruddy ducks, Buffleheads, American Wigeons and Common Mergansers were added to the total list for the day.

We tracked down a Merlin in her customary area. A single Harris hawk roamed around looking lost, but later we we found two nearby, and hope this single will rejoin the family. Meanwhile a Northern Harrier roused flocks of sparrows from the grass. It finally disappeared into the grass, and we assumed it stopped for lunch just as we had.

Thank you, Sheri and Tom, for the best day of the festival! Tomorrow we are heading to Madera Canyon, then home on Tuesday. We tallied up the birds we've seen this week, not just at the festival, and came up with 38 new birds to add to our Life List. Too Cool! After that comes the really hard part - trying to decide which birding festival to attend next time!

Wings Over Willcox

Let the birding begin! We took our first official trips with the Wings Over Willcox Birding and Nature Festival today, with Dick going in one direction and myself in another. Since I'm taking his trip tomorrow, we'll see if our lists come close.

Tom Whetten, a professional nature photographer, lead us on an all day photography adventure. We started waayyy before the crack of dawn for Whitewater Draw to catch the Sandhill Cranes leaving their roost for the day. They flew over by the raucous thousands, as I shivered in the cold. Having worn extra warm clothes needlessly at Muleshoe, I decided to tough it today, and regretted that decision until the sun actually warmed us around 9:30. After that I was glad the thermals were still at the motel! I suffered a setback when my memory card failed during the morning, losing what surely would have been award winning photos of a Great Horned Owl, some White Crowned Sparrows, two Shrikes in a bush, and the eagerly awaited Vermilion Flycatcher. Sigh... Replacement card inserted, I reshot those birds I could find again, except the Vermilion Flycatcher, but tomorrow is another day.

RTP means Red Tail on the Post, and we saw scads of them. I suspect that Red Tails were not as populous before people started putting up power and telephone poles in this treeless country. Two Red Tails treated us with an aerial display, ignoring the Harrier who harassed them throughout the morning. The Great Horned Owl sat on a tree branch snoozing in the warm morning sun. Although Barn Owls often roost in the same area, none were around today.

Although the Sandhill Cranes were off foraging, Pintail and Cinnamon Teal ducks joined the Snow Geese sharing the lake, along with a Sora - my surprise find! One of the other people on our trip promised to send its photo, since it ran into the cattails before I could get operational.

Just sit back and enjoy the Sandhill Cranes from the comfort of your computer chair.

Stargazing has changed a lot since I last tried it in high school. We joined a group on a dark hillside to watch the stars, serenaded by the Friday night Coyote Chorus just over the hill. The International Space Station sped overhead shining as brightly as Venus. Our leader used a telescope with a GPS finder and built in data on each item queried. As a motor aimed the scope at the correct part of the sky, the leader used a laser pointer to outline each constellation. The stars filled the sky and we examined several star clusters and the Andromeda Galaxy easily with our birding binoculars. We Star Wars and Star Trek fans tend to forget how far away those stars really are. Standing in the Arizona Desert in the cold makes it much more real.

Muleshoe Ranch

Muleshoe Ranch is about an hour and a half drive from Willcox (when you stop for every bird you see. Other people may not take so long.) down a dirt road. The Nature Conservancy and Bureau of Land Management (the BLM and TNC to the In Crowd) run the place. It is a terrific place to visit, but I must admit that this city girl can't imagine living that far away from everything all the time. Ah well, back to the story. Birding was great! We saw the wished for Roadrunner on the drive in, and several Red Tailed Hawks. The Red Tails really appreciate humans who put up all those tall poles just for hawks to perch on while looking for lunch, since there aren't many trees for this purpose. Female Cardinals impersonated the Pyrrhuloxia, which is going to be the next bird on the wish list. Western Bluebirds met some Lesser Goldfinches and House Finches for breakfast. We heard a Kingfisher along the river, and saw several Yellow Rumped Warblers. The most exciting find for today were the Golden Eagle and a Caracara!! So we are the first on the bird list for the festival. The Caracara was outside its normal range, and we kept thinking it was a Red Tail, until it turned and we saw the crest on its head. Life is simple - eat, sleep, bird.

So far, we have concentrated on the Sonoran desert, but Muleshoe is in a riparian area - and that's a big thing in Arizona. Riparian means having water, especially flowing water. The site is home to many springs, including some hot springs, which help support a fine community of tiny fish and algae drawing green art in the stream. When we learned about the hot tubs, we thought it would be close to the casitas, but this was a longer walk than we wanted to take in the cold dark night. The stars though.... Wow, it's been literally years since I have seen so many stars at night.

Today's big activity was a hike down the Bass Canyon. Can you believe this crystal blue sky!! I love it! One of our leaders is a fish specialist. Ducks and fish in the desert - my assumptions about Arizona are dropping daily! We learned about the native fish, and her reintroduction of a few species. On the hike, she carried a net, and captured some to show us, up close and personal. The water was crystal clear, and you could see them swimming around in the sparkles of sunshine. Some did the fish version of "pumping iron" as they swam upstream in the swift riffles as fast as their little fins could go. We also learned about controlled burns to encourage the right growth of grasses for this area. Controlled burns use an incendiary called ping pong balls and just do a literal spot burn, so you have to be in an airplane or the middle of the burned area itself to know there was any fire at all. The river flows for a while, then just disappears into the sand. You can tell that the river beds are huge for the flash floods in summer. The power of the water washes out large trees and large rocks equally.

As amateur geologists we were fascinated with all the basalt, and how it lies in layers of big boulders along the river banks. We crossed the stream to see an archaeological site with grinding holes and petroglyphs made by ancient man. If my life depended on recognizing tracks in the sand, I'd end up dead pretty fast. I couldn't tell a coyote from the cougar tracks we found. Guess which one this is!

And there was morning and there was evening, of the fourth day, and it was good. Tomorrow the actual birding festival begins in Willcox.