A Saguaro Globe and Those Crazy Finches

The beautiful large saguaro at the end of our driveway has sprouted a perfectly round globe on the top of one of its arms. It will be interesting to see if it becomes oblong, and if it flowers.

In the meantime, perhaps knowing that I am fascinated by nests, a pair of house finches has been spending the last two days trying to build a nest on the rear spoiler of my car. No matter how often I remove their nesting materials, they replace them. They are using mostly creosote and Texas ranger. Here is what it looked like this morning:

This afternoon, they had amassed the pile into a much more nestlike structure:

I will of course remove this as well, and I do need the car to go to Tohono Chul Park tomorrow. I wonder when they will give up? Or will I have to give up driving?

Technorati Tags: bird nests,bird nests in odd places

Sad Mama Dove

This is a brief followup to yesterday’s post about a gopher snake eating two nestling doves. This morning at the Park I told some fellow docents about what I had observed, and added that I felt very sorry for the mother dove, who seemed paralyzed with grief after the event. One of them assured me that doves don’t have a memory for such things, and that within a few minutes she had probably forgotten the whole thing.

I went back this morning to show a friend the tree and nest. There, sitting on the empty nest, was a mourning dove of the same size as the one I observed yesterday. I’m quite certain it was the same dove, and that she has not yet forgotten the loss of her babies.

Lest you accuse me of anthropomorphism, I consider that a compliment. Please see my post “Is Anthropomorphism Really A Bad Thing?”

Technorati Tags: Tohono Chul Park,Mourning dove,bird grieving behavior

Klutzy Dovelet

Note: I intended to finish my series on beginning birding with a roundup of books, binoculars and apps.(The first four posts are: “How I Taught Myself About Desert Birds”;  “Birdwatcher—Or Birder?”;  “Your First Bird Walk”. and Improving Your Birding Skills.) I spent about 3 /12 hours gathering information, choosing links and illustrations, and writing. I was nearly finished when I hit the wrong button and the entire post disappeared.

I will try to recreate most of the information in a later post or posts. But for today, I will talk about frustration other than mine: that of a hapless white-winged dovelet, who recently fledged in my carport but does not yet seem to have the knack of how to fly.

Day before yesterday, I startled the bird, which had been standing at the edge of its flimsy nest, watching its mother and sibling in another part of the carport. The bird flew off its perch—straight up, hitting its head on the carport roof. A little dazed, it flew to the other end of the carport, and again straight up, again hitting its head. I decided to leave so the poor little thing could calm down.

Well, they’re kind of ugly, I admit. But also kind of cute.

This morning, the fledgling was back at its post at the edge of the nest when I opened the car door to head for Tohono Chul Park. This time the bird flew out from the nest, heading across the carport rather than straight up. “Aha!” I thought. “It has learned that flying is possible in more than one direction.”

I watched as it flew to the other end of the carport, where there is a trellis with very large spaces between the crossbars—spaces easily big enough for a full-grow bird, let along a tiny fledgling, to pass through. The young bird headed straight for the trellis and smacked head-on into one of the crossbars, then fell behind some cabinets. When I came back later, there was no sign of the poor little thing.

PS: I’m pretty sure this is the same fledgling, now perched on some lumber in the carport. Presumably his mom is feeding him, and who knows? Maybe he will make it.

 

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Eight Amazing Facts about Bird Nests

We’ll wrap up our tour of Sonoran desert bird nests (My Favorite Bird Nests Part I and My Favorite Bird Nests Part II) with some facts I’ve learned about nesting. Several of the nests discussed here are pictured in the two posts linked above.

1. Both male and female birds build nests. With some birds, like hummers, the male has only one job: to impregnate the female. His participation is limited to the proverbial “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!”  Other male birds, like doves, cactus wrens and verdins, share the task of nest-building and often of raising the chicks as well.

2. The male can pick; the female can choose.Sometimes both birds participate, but have different jobs. The verdin male, for example, builds the outside shell of more than one nest and lets the female decide which to use. Then he finishes construction, while she furnishes the inside with down and other bits of fluff. With white-winged and mourning doves, the male repeatedly presents the female with sticks, and she chooses which to use and where to put them. I once spent about an hour watching a pair of white-wingeds construct a nest at the top of a support pole at Tohono Chul Park. Here’s a photo of the male holding what he apparently deemed to be a particularly excellent twig:

Note: the female didn’t agree, and dropped the twig on the ground.

3. Some birds “decorate” their nests. As the photos in the posts linked above show, both hummingbirds and vireos often incorporate bits of lichen and leaves into their nests as decoration and/or camouflage. Cactus wrens often use odd found objects in their nests. I’ve seen yarn, kleenex, cellophane, and, after Christmas, even shiny bits of tinsel.

4. Birds nesting in cactus make the nest safe for their offspring. I don’t know if all cactus-nesting birds do this, but I have seen cactus wrens use their bills to methodically pluck spines from cactus where they are nesting, especially near the nest opening.

A cactus wren at home in the midst of cholla spines.

5. But cactus is not always a safe environment. Cactus is a popular environment for nest-building because the cactus spines deter many predators. But not all. Several snakes, including kingsnakes, can easily climb cactus to reach and pilfer bird nests. 

6. Some birds nest INSIDE cactus. The many holes seen on the sides of saguaro cactus are produced by Gila woodpeckers (and Northern flickers). The saguaro produces a hard scab around the hole, which is then used as a nest by the woodpecker. When the woodpecker is done with its nest, other birds, including several species of owls and even house sparrows, move right in.

The holes in this saguaro are most likely Gila woodpecker nests

7. Many birds do not sleep in their nests. At Tohono Chul Park, only cactus wrens and verdins roost in their nests year-round. The other birds roost on the ground, or in trees or bushes. 

8. Some birds don’t build nests. As mentioned in #6 above, many birds use an existing hole in a tree or saguaro to lay their eggs in. Other birds, like the Gambel’s quail, simply lay their eggs in a depression in the ground or even a flower pot.

Nine quail eggs in a flower pot at Tohono Chul Park

BONUS: If you admired the beautiful Bell’s vireo nests in yesterday’s post, link to this AMAZING VIDEO that shows a pair of vireos constructing their nest, using twigs, leaves, and spider webbing.

Technorati Tags: Bird behavior,nesting behavior

Quail census

Hooray, hooray, it’s finally hot! Really hot! And that means… baby quail time in the Sonoran desert. Other people dread June, but I look forward to it. For some reason known only to Nature, the majority of baby quails around here are hatched during the hottest, driest part of the year.

The babies don’t mind, of course, because extreme heat is all they know. I’m wondering if this behavior evolved to make sure that any young quail who lasted till the end of the summer were REALLY fit.

Mr. and Mrs. Gambel’s quail

The beautiful birds I am talking about are Gambel’s quail, small ground-dwellers who live in the deserts of southwestern Arizona and northwestern Mexico. They hang out in large flocks, called coveys, most of the year, but in late spring they start to pair off, and once they’ve got families going they become very hostile to each other.

The “dorm” tree where quail roost in the front of my house.

I became obsessed with Gambel’s quail shortly after we moved to our new home in the desert, eight years ago. They roosted around the property, and particularly in a Meyer’s lemon tree next to our front door. I called it the dorm tree, and watched the quail go to roost for about an hour every night for a couple of years. During the day I observed them out in my bird garden, where I keep a quail block. Nothing they did was too small to escape my attention. I began to think of myself as the Jane Goodall of quails.

Quail eggs

I still keep track of the new families. Here is what we have right now: a family of three half-grown chicks; a second family that started out with twelve little fuzzballs, and now is down to eight sixth-graders; a new family of five very little chicks—nursery school age, I would guess--and another family of three first-grade chicks. I expect to see more new families every day or so from now till the end of the month.

  Handsome papa quail keeping guard while his family feeds

The father of the largest family is very aggressive. When they are fighting or competing for females, male quails jump up and bump chests, much like NBA basketball players. A few days ago I saw this particular father lower his head to the ground and charge another quail like a bull. Sometimes he spreads his wings and tail like a turkey and simply runs at a foe. Today I watched him chase away white-winged doves, rabbits, squirrels, and innumerable other quails. Some of his offspring have begun to imitate him, charging at sparrow babies and apparently scaring the heck out of them.

There are more stories about quail than anything else in this blog. Here are some of my favorites:

A quail explosion (caused by a hawk)

The sad story of an abandoned quail baby

A post with photos of teeny-tiny babies on my porch

And finally, a video of teeny babies and their mama, also on the porch

If all that isn’t enough quail-ness for you, just search the blog for dozens more quail posts. I will update the quail census from time to time during the Blogathon.

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As The Egg Turns, Part Two

A few weeks ago, my Internet buddy in South Carolina, G.H. Curminion, wrote a guest post about the Canada goose nest just outside his office. For a few scary days, it looked as if some predatory crows might attack the nest, but the goose parents remained vigilant. Here is G.H.’s follow-up, illustrated with his excellent photographs.

I don’t know about the eggs. She keeps turning them regularly. Maybe she feels something stirring. Someone here said one of the eggs had a finger–sized hole in it late yesterday and was oozing liquid. Mama is still nesting, but her wings are a bit spread out, so maybe something is going on under there.

Something was definitely going on!

She stood up – three chicks!

Looks like two eggs didn’t hatch. 

 

Aaaaand . . . within a couple hours they started to graze and wander off.

G.H. tells me that “our” goose family has stopped by the nest once or twice since the babies hatched. It’s so nice to read a story with a happy ending.

Technorati Tags: Bird behavior,Canada geese nesting,Canada geese

As The Egg Turns: Goose Drama by the Parking Lot

This guest post was written by G.H. Curminion, my Internet buddy in South Carolina, who also took the photos.

This is so cool. My office is on the ground floor, with floor to ceiling windows. I looked up a few minutes ago and a Canada goose was building a nest not 6' from my window! It can't see me, what with the reflection and the mini-blinds. The pair has been hanging out in a small L-shaped area, about 20' on each side, with the sidewalk and parking lot crossing the open part, for about three days now. I thought it was odd, because the geese usually wander around in indiscriminate numbers, but lately it's just been the one pair.

Oh! she just stood up! I saw an egg! Dad has been standing guard faithfully since early this week. Now I feel bad about heckling him every morning when I get out of the car (I'm parked just off the L).
It's getting pretty windy, and the area is well-protected, but the wind swirls back in that spot. I'll have to alert our groundskeepers to stay away. They come through with leaf blowers every few days. The nest is built from the pine needles they use as ground cover.

Mama Goose looks uncomfortable. Maybe she can see me, so I just turned out my office lights. Maybe it's the wind, but she's not really settling fully on the nest. Sort of squatting over it. Maybe she's laying another egg! Last time we had chicks here there were five. Okay, I just stood up to close the mini-blinds some more. There are two eggs. [Mama goose went on to lay two more eggs.]

[Later] Well, before I left on Friday I noticed that Mama Goose had covered up the nest with more pine straw and departed. I was worried because of a storm front due to come through that evening. When I pulled in this morning, the nest was still there, covered with even MORE pine straw, and the couple are hanging out, grazing on the median in the parking lot, watching the nest. When she is on the nest, he stands guard. 

Google says incubation period is 24-28 days, so we’re in for the long haul. Dad was chasing people away from the front door last night, and lunged at my car when I pulled out. My parking space is closest to the nest, and when I pulled up this morning, dad was sitting in MY spot. I had to park a couple spots down. So far he hasn’t lunged at me, but apparently there are several pairs nesting in the complex. The other day one of the dads chased the UPS guy all the way around one of the buildings.

To be continued….

Technorati Tags: Bird behavior,Canada geese,Canada geese nesting

What were those rabbits doing? And other interesting tidbits from the natural world.

A couple of evenings ago I was staring through our front picture window, as I often do, watching the birds and critters, when I saw something I’d never seen before. A cottontail rabbit was lying stretched out on its stomach in a shallow depression the length of its body. It was unmoving, and though it occasionally opened its eyes, its ears were down, and I thought it must be sick or dying.

(Photo courtesy of azgfd)

Another rabbit crouched next to the one that was stretched out. It seemed to be licking the face of the one lying down. It licked the right side of the face, then the nose-end, then the left side. Then it circled to the back, and licked the back part of the seemingly sick rabbit. I wondered if I were witnessing some kind of bunny funeral ritual. But then, something happened—a hawk or other predator must have appeared, because the rabbit that was stretched out suddenly opened its eyes, straightened its ears, and sat up. Suddenly it, the other rabbit, and one I hadn’t seen before took off running for the neighbor’s yard.

I have since done some reading, and believe that the stretched-out rabbit may have been a female, and that she was being groomed by a male interested in sex. But who knows? If anyone reading this has witnessed this behavior and knows what it means, please let us know in the comments.

This morning I looked out at the yard just as the sun was rising, and saw a pair of javelinas crossing the yard. Though they are big and rather awkward looking, it was amazing to see how delicately they walked on their relatively tiny hooves.

Photo from azgfd

Despite their appearance, by the way, javelinas are not closely related to pigs, which come from the Old World. Javelinas, which originated in South America, resemble their European cousins through convergent evolution.  

Finally, something else I had never previously seen: a friend and I went birding yesterday at a nearby artificial wetlands. The air was thick with the mating cries of red-winged blackbirds, which could be seen in every bush and tree. While trying to attract a mate, these beautiful males actually erect the red feather patches on their wings!

I don’t know about you, but if I were a female blackbird, I would definitely be interested!

Technorati Tags: cottontail behavior,urban javelinas,red-winged blackbirds

A thrilling bird concert

Curve-billed Thrashers and Northern Mockingbirds are two of my favorite birds. They are actually closely related—both members of the bird family Mimidae. Their bodies are nearly identical, but the slightly-smaller mockingbird is grey, white, and black, while the thrasher is mostly grayish brown. Mockingbirds have yellow eyes and a short straight beak, while the thrasher’s eyes are orange and its bill  long and distinctly curved. Both birds eat insects, seeds, and berries, though the thrasher is more of a desert dweller than the mockingbird, which is often found in urban environments.

         

Mockingbird                                    Curve-billed thrasher (Sue Feyrer)

Both birds excel at singing. Nearly everyone has heard the beautiful, ever-changing trills of a mockingbird in the spring, but not everyone knows that thrashers can sing nearly as well. The thrasher’s ordinary call is a piercing upside-down wolf whistle (whit-WHEET!), but their song is beautiful and very melodious.

This morning at Tohono Chul Park I heard beautiful birdsong on one of the desert trails. As I approached, a mockingbird flew into a tree above me, but it was not singing. I followed its gaze to see this beautiful thrasher singing its heart out.

Curve-billed thrasher singing on a saguaro

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Mid-October Birding at Tohono Chul Park

Today was a terrific day for a bird walk in the Park: clear blue skies and temps in the low seventies. I was greeted almost as soon as I arrived by white-crowned sparrows, which I had not seen since early spring.

In the front of the Park, a rare treat: a cactus wren building a nest in the saguaro at the top of the trail that enters the Park!

                     

Cactus wrens build messy, football-shaped enclosed nests throughout the year. Nobody knows why they build multiple nests—possibly some of them are decoys. It’s not unusual in any given month to see a cactus wren with nesting material in its beak.

  This wren repeatedly selected material from either side of the path, flew up into the cactus, added the new nesting materials, arranged them carefully, then flew back to the ground to repeat the process. Here is a brief video showing the bird’s efforts.

Cactus wren building nest in saguaro at Tohono Chul Park, Tucson AZ

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Why do hummingbirds fight?

“Cool it, guys! There’s plenty for everybody!”

Yes, I do talk to my birds, and often exhort the hummers to play nice with one another and stop fighting over the feeders. These fierce little jewels always ignore my advice. I recently read a discussion on a hummingbird mailing list that goes a long way toward explaining this aspect of hum-behavior.

According to Lanny Chambers, a hummingbird expert whose excellent website, Hummingbirds.net, is packed with photos and information on hummingbirds, hummers fight because:

 

…they treat feeders essentially the same as flowers. A good patch of wildflowers in the middle of nowhere will provoke chases and battles, as one bird tries to defend the territory against all intruders. So, the real question is, "why are hummingbirds so territorial?"

The answer for adult males in spring is easy: the birds with the best territories attract the most females, and get the most sex. Hens want strong genes for their chicks, and they know where to find them: the nastiest, meanest, most evil-tempered studs will be successfully holding down the most desirable food resources.

Outside of that scenario, each flower contains a tiny amount of nectar, replenished slowly over time. A hummer doesn't want another bird to get the nectar first, since it will have to wait until the flower produces more, so the resource is jealously guarded. I don't think a hummingbird has any concept of unlimited supply, so they defend feeders for the same reason.

There are some occasions on which hummingbirds will share food. I myself have observed this, most often at the end of the day or during a cold snap. A couple of years ago two young male Costa’s hummingbirds uneasily co-guarded my patio feeder, as I described here. But this behavior is very rare.

Nancy L. Newfield of Louisiana, author and hummingbird expert, believes the hummingbirds’ perception of the rarity of nectar is “the crux of the whole matter.Every drop of nectar is regarded as the last drop of food on Earth.  They defend their food source because their very life depends on food.” 

Adds Sheri L. Williamson, another expert, who is author of the indispensable Peterson’s Field Guide to Hummingbirds of North America, “It’s all about that limited resource and walking (well, hovering) a very fine line between survival and starvation.”

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My First Tucson Birds

I moved back to Tucson, where I had grown up, in 1989. After twenty years in NYC, where the only wildlife I saw were squirrels, rats, pigeons and sparrows, I was suddenly in the heart of the beautiful Sonoran desert with its amazing birds.I was lucky to have picked a house near the river (a dry river, but still attractive to wildlife), and my tiny back yard was full of growing things and trees. I quickly added a garden and then a pond.

I sat in the back yard every afternoon for one to two hours with binoculars and bird books. I sat in my office, gazing out at the astonishing birds when I wasn’t busy typing, and sometimes even when I was.

White-winged dove and gila woodpecker

The first unknown bird I remember seeing was a large black-and-white striped bird pecking on the trunk of my tangelo tree. I quickly learned that this was a Gila woodpecker, the owner of the loud, raucous voice that sometimes startled me when the window was open. I also learned that we had two types of doves: white-winged and mourning.

 
My first familiar bird was one I had gotten to know when visiting my parents in the Washingon, DC, area: the mockingbird. Now I could see these amazing, intelligent, and beautiful creatures close-up.

 
The next desert bird I learned to identify was the curve-billed thrasher, a close relative of the mockingbird. Hours of observation showed me that these gorgeous birds had yellow eyes, except when young (juveniles’ eyes are gray). They also invariably have a grumpy, peeved expression on their faces.

Curve-billed thrasher; not my photo

I got to know these and many, many other birds over the first few years I was here. Most wonderful of all were the hummingbirds, and I will write about them in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Tucson birding,white-winged dove,curve-billed thrasher,Gila woodpecker,Northern mockingbird

Quail and Mockingbird Notes

Long-time readers of these posts—and anyone who knows me personally—knows that I’m fascinated by bird behavior. I’ve been closely watching backyard birds for more than twenty years, and every day I see something new.

Just now I’ve been watching quail at the quail block in my bird garden. We are at the height of baby-quail season, and there are several families, with chicks of all different ages. Some of the families are quite large: there’s a group with eight or nine kindergarteners (I’m thinking these might be the same guys I videotaped in my previous post). There are several families with high-school age and even older chicks—not much smaller than the parents. The largest such group that I’ve been able to count had seven adolescents, though most older groups have two to five surviving offspring..

I should really install one of those “take-a-number” machines; the families take turns, waiting for the previous family to finish before coming to the quail block. They are sometimes lined up just outside the fence. Whenever a solitary quail or an overeager youngster tries to join the party before the previous group has left, there is a lot of squawking and running at the intruder. It is very fun to watch.

                                  

For another view of bird pecking order and sharing (or not) of resources, check out this discussion of a possessive mockingbird at my previous home.

Technorati Tags: Gambel's quail,mockingbirds,bird behavior

Quail Update

I haven’t posted a quail update in quite some time, though I am as obsessed with these beautiful birds as ever. A few weeks ago someone at the Park commented that it was a poor quail year, with very few babies. This person does not spend the summer in Tucson. While some broods appear as early as late April, the majority of chicks are hatched once the weather gets really hot (see my comment on quail babies in an earlier post).

This year is a banner year for quail. Families of all sizes, with babies of all ages, are everywhere—in my yard, in my neighborhood, at Tohono Chul Park. Several broods of chicks are already mature looking, though not as large as their parents. Others are recently out of the egg. One interesting group of six are what I think of as teenagers—and they are on their own with no adults. They always hang together, and I haven’t seen them enough to tell if one of them acts as the leader.

This family group with ten very young chicks (I’m guessing no more than a couple of days old) showed up in my back yard bird garden yesterday afternoon. It was VERY hot, so they tried the shade of the porch.

                                            

Ten Gambel’s quail chicks and their parents.

Technorati Tags: Gambel's quail,Birds of Tucson,baby birds

Quail Tales

We are now in the heart of dry summer, the time of year when it is blisteringly hot with no clouds anywhere, and the time when the entire desert seems alive with young Gambel’s quail, ranging in age from newly-hatched champagne corks to sparrow-sized teenagers.

I love watching these little guys, and each family group I see adds to my store of information on quail behavior. Several large family groups have visited my backyard bird pond in the last week. The largest group had at least fifteen chicks, but counting them exactly was like trying to count the individual particles in a microscopic view of Brownian motion.

                            Adult male Gambel’s quail

Quail Tale 1: Yesterday a family with six or seven very young chicks came tumbling into the garden through the chain-link fence. The parents easily crossed the pond, stepping on rocks that stick up out of the water. Most of the chicks easily followed, except for two who, reaching the largest rock in the pond, did a sudden double-take and looked at the vast expanse (maybe three inches)  of water they must cross. They both stood on the rock like little kids on a diving board, clearly getting up their courage to jump. Finally one tried—and fell into the water. It clambered back on the rock, shook itself off, and this time used its wings to assist. Its brother or sister followed soon after.

Quail Tale 2: The other afternoon I saw a group of five teenage quails (about the size of the ones in the video below) in the front yard. There were no adults with them as they pecked at something under the pyracantha bush. A pair of white-winged doves approached, interested in whatever the quails were eating. All of the quails immediately attacked the much-larger doves with their beaks, running at them and eventually driving them off. They acted like a gang of teenage bullies, but I think maybe they are on their own and have to hang tough to survive.

Quail in Sundial Plaza at Tohono Chul Park

Quail Tale 3: This is a video from Tohono Chul Park yesterday morning. These youngsters are what I consider high-school age. They were gathered beneath a seed feeder in the Sundial Plaza. The biggest one, with the comma-shaped topknot, is the father.

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Hot bird walk in the Park

This morning it was so hot so early (around ninety at 8:30), that I didn’t really expect anyone to show up for my bird walk. But four people did: a young woman and her fourth-grade son, who adores birds and has practically memorized his bird guide, and a middle-aged couple who decided to join us on the spur of the moment.

The Park was so beautiful today, even in the heat. There were lots of desert spiny lizards, and exotic pipevine flowers, and local birds. Cicadas were buzzing, and I said that if someone would catch a cicada I would show them how it makes the noise. Sure enough, the boy caught one. It was furious! Buzzing and making other strange sounds that might have been cicada cursing. I had trouble getting it to hold still long enough to grasp it and turn it over to show the orange tympanum that it vibrates for that distinctive summery sound. Male cicada from Bing Images

There were two high points to the bird walk: the little Cooper’s hawklets are out of the egg and standing up in the nest. They are too far up to photograph yet, but I could clearly see round fuzzy white heads and big black eyes. And in the fig tree in the ethno garden, we saw  a BEAUTIFUL Bell’s vireo nest with the mother sitting in it. What an intricate, beautifully-woven and decorated structure!

Bell’s vireo nest, Tohono Chul Park

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My beloved white-winged doves

The beautiful white-winged dove (Zenaida asiatica) is one of my favorite migrant birds. They spend the cool months—from October on-- in Mexico and Central America, then come up here just ahead of the saguaro bloom (late March to early April). One of the great iconic sights of the Sonoran desert is a white-winged dove atop a blooming or fruiting saguaro.

White-winged dove on saguaro at dawn

A lot of folks I know, including fellow docents at Tohono Chul Park don’t like white-wingeds because they are noisy (“Who Cooks For YOUUUUUUUUU!”), ubiquitous, and messy. To me, the sound of their calls is a comfort, a harbinger and and a musical accompaniment of summer in the desert. They are frequent breeders, so there are a lot of them, and they’re big birds with big scats. I find them sweet and endearing.

White-wingeds are wonderfully devoted parents. In a post last year I described in detail the arduous and ultimately heartbreaking nesting adventures of a pair at the Park.

More recently, a pair successfully fledged a pair of dovelets in our carport.

They are at it again, using the same nest. When the babies fledged, one apparently wasn’t quite ready, and the two spent their first night of freedom huddled motionless on a wall outside our bedroom patio. I was afraid a predator would get them, but found them in the morning atop the water-heater closet:

I haven’t seen them since, but I recently read that white-wingeds are known for staying together with nestmates and other family members, sometimes for life, so perhaps they are taking care of each other, wherever they are.

This is one of my favorite white-winged pictures. This bird was cooling his feet on a hot July day on a cactus fountain at Tohono Chul Park:

                                                                                 

Technorati Tags: Birds of Arizona,White-winged dove,bird behavior,Tohono Chul Park