White-winged babies everywhere!

Anyone who knows me or has followed this blog for any length of time knows that I LOVE LOVE LOVE white-winged doves. In our new house, there are several white-winged nests in various locations, and I've been seeing fledglings everywhere. Here are photos of three of the latest white-wingeds to grace the world. They are very unassuming and kind of geeky-looking, but so shy and sweet. Click here for the rather alarming tale of an extremely klutzy white-winged baby.

This little guy has been hanging out with the pottery and ceramic ducks on the wall of my private patio

 

And these little beauties have been making themselves invisible among the rocks on the edge of the front porch

Late Spring, Early Summer Beauty at Tohono Chul Park

We have gone from a relatively cool spring to a suddenly and ferociously hot summer, with the Monsoon fast approaching. Before it gets here, I want to share some of the beautiful things I've seen in the Park in the last few weeks:

You may have to look carefully to see the mama hummer sitting on this nest, which is directly on top of another nest in which someone--probably the same bird--recently fledged two babies. It is a pent-nest, if you will.

Below is a beautiful white-winged dove perched atop a blooming agave:

And a Gila woodpecker on nearby agave blossoms:

My last still photo is of two adorable, sleepy screech owls who have been roosting in the tree outside the Museum Shop:

 

 And finally, here's a video of a beautiful, very long gophersnake I saw meandering across the main path near the old penstemon garden. Even if you don't like snakes, just take a moment to watch its grace and fluidity:

 

Amazing dove parenting

This morning, standing at the kitchen window at dawn, I saw a cluster of four white-winged doves on the wall. At first I thought it was two adults feeding two chicks, but then realized it was one extremely patient adult feeding THREE very demanding chicks. I finally sorted it out, and believe it was mama or papa, two recently-fledged chicks, and one nearly full-grown chick from the previous clutch. I’ve always known white-wingeds were good parents, but had no idea they would continue to feed a fledgling until it was nearly full grown!

I do not have pictures of the incident, but here are nestling doves in the carport from a previous year.

These homely little guys will grow up to look like this beauty:

Technorati Tags: White-winged dove,bird behavior,birds of the southwest

3 Reasons to love the Sonoran Desert in Spring

I love late spring in the Sonoran Desert. There is so much beauty now. Here are three things in particular that I look forward to from year to year, and cherish every second that they are here:

1. Palo Verde trees in bloom. Throughout the city of Tucson and in the surrounding desert, everywhere you look there is a sea of yellow blossoms.

2. White-winged doves on saguaros. The beautiful white-winged dove spends the winter in Mexico, then flies up here in springtime to feed on saguaro blossoms and fruit. The most iconic image of the Sonoran desert is a white-winged dove atop a saguaro. (In this photo the dove is accompanied by a Gila woodpecker and a bee.)

3. Baby Gambel’s quail. These adorable little guys start showing up in April and provide continuing entertainment and beauty well into summer.

 

Technorati Tags: Sonoran Desert,White-winged doves,saguaro blossoms,palo verde trees

My Favorite Bird Nests, Part I

Nests are among the most miraculous of the miracles of nature. You have probably heard of the extremely elaborate bowerbird nests of New Guinea, but to my mind any nest—even the rudimentary crossed sticks of a mourning dove—is an amazing accomplishment by a creature that has no hands.

In an upcoming post we’ll take a closer look about the how’s and wherefores of nest-building. Today and tomorrow I want to show you some of the nests I’ve been keeping an eye on over the last couple of years.

White-winged dove: This beautiful bird builds a very flimsy nest from a few sticks and twigs. In a good spot, though, the nest will last through several broods. The white-winged dove who nests in my carport raised six chicks last year and is on her second pair of hatchlings at this writing.

Mourning dove: These doves, like white-wingeds, build very flimsy nests. Here is a mourning dove with her two babies in a nest on TOP of a cactus wren nest.

Verdin: This tiny bird builds a small, round, enclosed nest, usually in a palo verde tree. Here are a verdin and a verdin nest:

Cooper’s Hawk: These predators nest every spring at Tohono Chul Park. The nests are massive, big enough to hold both parents and two or three chicks. Here are last year’s nest, high in the tree, and a juvenile Cooper’s soon after fledging.

House finch: House finches and Lesser Goldfinches build  compact, cup-like nests. Here is a beautiful, tightly-woven nest we found in a cholla at Catalina State Park a couple of years ago. We couldn’t imagine who had created it. My docent buddy, Sue, went back the next day and waited until the proprietor, a house finch, returned.

Quail census update: there are so many families now, of varying sizes and ages, that they actually line up at the edge of the garden and wait their turn before coming to the quail block. In just the last hour, I’ve had two families of 3 and 5 with half-grown chicks, the family of nine grade-schoolers, and at least two families with three to five chicks no more than a few days old.

Technorati Tags: bird nests,birds of the southwest,verdin nest,Cooper's hawk nest,white-winged dove nest

My first day of Spring

I have had to be away from Tohono Chul Park for nine days. In my absence, spring arrived. The flowers are flowering, and the birds are nesting. The desert tortoises have emerged from their dens.  It is beautiful and thrilling. Best of all, the first white-winged dove of the year  arrived today, though I did not get a photo.

Penstemon

Mexican honeysuckle                                   Texas Mountain Laurel

            

Bluebells and gold poppies in the Cactus Circle

Desert Tortoise                                            Cooper’s Hawk Nest

            

Mourning dove nest in a yucca, and, below, a verdin building a nest

Verdin working on a nest

 

Technorati Tags: Tohono Chul Park,Desert flowers,birds nesting,desert tortoise

Snake Over Troubled Waters

Yesterday in the Park I saw two things I’ve never seen before. The first occurred while I was still in the parking lot. I was just getting out of the car when I saw two white-winged doves very close together on the ground. On closer look, I saw they were a parent dove and a baby dove. The parent was feeding the fledgling, very much the way a female hummingbird feeds her offspring: repeatedly thrusting its beak into the baby’s open mouth, and presumably into its crop. I suppose the parent was feeding its offspring “pigeon’s milk,” which is a nutritious liquid doves and pigeons produce in the crop. (For more information on bird milk, see this fascinating article.) This observation answered a major question for me: do doves care for their babies once they have fledged? I always suspected they did, and now I have seen it with my own eyes!

The second thing I had never seen before occurred in the riparian area of the Park. I had finished with my bird walk and was on the way to Reptile Ramble when a fellow docent pointed out a large gopher snake in the thick undergrowth behind our recirculating stream.

As we watched, the snake approached a small waterfall, then elevated the front part of its body and formed a bridge to the other side. The rest of his body followed, serpentining and staying dry. I wish I had thought to take a picture, but I was so startled and fascinated I could only watch in amazement.

Finally, this is something I have seen many times, but I’m sure a lot of the people reading this blog have not. Our reptile show usually ends with a discussion and demonstration of a Gila monster. These huge, lumbering lizards are one of only three species of venomous lizards in the world (the others are the Mexican beaded lizard and the Komodo dragon). Gila monsters are interesting in so many ways, and I will do a post on them soon. But for today, I just want to post the short video I took of the demonstration animal walking around the inside of the safety fence, trying to find a way out.

Gila monster, Reptile Ramble at 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

HEARTBREAK!

I’m very sorry to report that the whitewing dove’s nest, so lovingly built by the hardworking parents, is no more. When I got to the Park yesterday morning, I saw that the winds of the previous night had shredded it.
Then I looked down, below the nest, to see a sad sight:
                                                                             
While I was photographing the broken eggs, the male dove arrived and did a double-take when he saw the nest (and his mate) were gone. He then sat on the crossbeam and began cooing, repeatedly, the saddest sound I’ve ever heard a bird make.

White winged dove and nest

                                                                                                                     
I hope they rebuild soon, in a safer spot.

Whitewings nesting

A big tentlike canvas structure shades the Overlook, which is where we meet for all Park tours, and where we hold Reptile Ramble. Yesterday I watched a pair of whitewing doves building a nest atop one of the pillars that holds up the shade.

White winged doves building nest

Daddy’s on the left; mom is on the right. She stayed on the nest the whole time I watched, alternately moving the twigs around, fluffing the nest, and resting.

Female white-winged on nest

Meanwhile, her mate went searching for twigs to bring her. He was very, very particular—one might even say a bit OCD. I watched him pick up and reject dozens of twigs from several gardens around the Overlook. When he found one he liked, he would take it to her and place it on the nest. She always immediately moved it to a different spot while he took off to search again.

Male white winged dove

“There’s got to be one around here somewhere….”

Male white winged dove

“Nope. Nothing in here.”

Finally, he made his way to the area underneath the nest, where a handful of dropped sticks lay.

Male white winged dove

“Say, these look good!”

Male white winged dove

“This one is perfect!”

Male white winged dove with nesting material

He’s got the goods!

“Here I come, sweetie!”

Male and female white winged doves on nest

Finis.

Major quail update

Wish I had newer quail photos. Oh, well.  A quick update. First, in the backyard, I have several families, not sure how many, ranging in size from 3 chicks to 15+. The chicks in the large family are probably junior high age by now. It’s amazing to me that the parents have managed to raise and protect so many. I’m assuming this is the family that started out with around 2 dozen hatchlings a few weeks ago.
In the front yard, my dorm tree has turned into a sort of bird concentration camp. I swear I don’t know how so many birds manage to sleep in the same fairly small space. A whole bunch of little birds—I think finches and sparrows, and some young cactus wrens, occupy the top branches. Then the quail come. One quail family, with six kids in high school, come every evening just before sunset. The chicks still aren’t very good at flying into the tree and actually landing in the branch they’re aiming for, but they all get it done. I’ve seen a couple of other lone adult birds go up there too. I haven’t spent enough time to know if there are others or not. Between the quail and the songbirds, the racket is quite impressive.

Just across the driveway, in one of the palo verdes, a family (?) of whitewings are nesting. I think it’s the mom and the two chicks she just fledged, plus another dove—maybe the father or her bff.