My beautiful bird garden

This spring has been so beautiful. The whole northern part of Tucson and much of the rest of the valley is a sea of yellow, from all the blooming palo verde trees. Right now the main ones in bloom are the more numerous foothills palo verdes, which have a lighter, less yellow aspect (because one petal of each flower is white). We have a storm, with wind, coming, and within a week I expect they will all be gone. Here are two early-morning pictures from my backyard bird garden, showing palo verdes and some other wild plants including the incomparable Mexican Bird of Paradise.

A beautiful April day at Tohono Chul Park

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It’s getting warm, but everything at the Park is so beautiful. Baby birds, nests, young squirrel families, and flowers everywhere you look: wildflowers, flowering trees, cactus flowers…. you can’t help but smile.

                         New hummer mom

Ocotillo blossoms

 Perezia and Passionflower

Raspberry TrichocereusRose-colored prickly pear budStaghorn Cholla blooms

Under the mistletoe

Cactus wrens are known for their large, untidy enclosed nests, often built in chollas or desert trees like Palo Verde or Mesquite. The nests are sometimes decorated with found objects, such as tissue paper, cellophane, or bits of yarn or colored thread, resulting in a rather antic-looking nest that seems to suit these bold, sassy desert birds.                              

The other day at Tohono Chul Park I was amazed to watch a pair of cactus wrens working on a nest INSIDE a huge clump of desert mistletoe that hung from the branches of a flowering sweet acacia tree. When they had finished, you could easily see the bottom of the nest by standing directly under the mistletoe, and I have since watched the birds flying in and out of their hidden aerie.

                    Here’s the mistletoe:                               

                 

And here’s the nest, hidden inside it:

                                                   

I have also since learned that this behavior is common out in the desert, and that many birds besides cactus wrens and phainopeplas build in, under, or on mistletoe.

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Bird stuff

The Park is a’ twitter with birds. Courting birds, fighting birds, nesting birds. On Friday we watched a pair of male phainopeplas compete for a female, who sat calmly at the top of a tree ear the Sin Agua garden, while her suitors performed acrobatics all around her, being sure to show off their sexy white wing bars. I’ve seen several pairs of verdins with nesting materials—including one that was apparently putting the finishing touches on a nest along the Texas trail; Gila woodpeckers apparently already tending young inside their nests in saguaro holes; and cactus wrens and doves searching for just the right twig or branch for their new home.

In addition to all these treasures, I was privileged to be the “helper” at our bimonthly Harris Hawk demonstration, featuring Sueno, a captive hawk who was badly injured as a fledgling and is now an education hawk. Sueno is very smart and knows several words; she is also devoted to her “family,” in this case her trainer. Here’s a very brief video of Sueno doing her thing.

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More flowers!

So many things are blooming in the Park. Some wildflowers, some cultivated, some trees… everything and everywhere. Here are a few more:

This is blackfoot daisy, and it blooms practically all year, but looks best in spring.

  On the left is creosote bush, with its delicate yellow flower.

 

And above is a South African plant, Cape Aloe

             

Gooding’s Verbena and Western Wallflower, a sweet-smelling wild mustard

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Spring has sprung

It is truly spring in the Sonoran Desert.  The Park is lush with flowers of every color.

    

   DESERT BLUEBELLS              FIRECRACKER PENSTEMON     PARRY’S PENSTEMON

Birds are courting, building nests, mating, and in some cases raising young.  One Anna’s hummingbird nest in the parking lot has already produced two fledglings.  Another Anna’s nest has two ready to go.  The mother is running herself ragged providing insects for her babies.  The other day I saw a male Phainopepla  tenderly feeding a mistletoe berry to his beloved.

                               

         This male Costa’s hummingbird flew right into the picture while I was photographing some of the flowers!

Most exciting for me is the new Cooper's hawk nest in the riparian area. It looks like a very large pile of very large twigs—as if, said one of my fellow docents, it had been built by giant mourning doves.

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Sandhill Cranes

Yesterday I went to Whitewater Draw, near Willcox (home of Rex Allen!) on a tour with Tohono Chul Park to see the Sandhill Cranes, literal snowbirds who visit this area each winter. The cranes are so impressive. Around eleven every morning thousands of them come in for an early roost. They fly into the area in wave after wave—most in formations (a “V”), some in small groupings or singly. This goes on for about two hours.

COMING IN!

 

I inserted the video so you can get an idea of the amazing calls the birds make while flying and landing. Their sounds filled the whole vast area. I wonder if they are calling out to their friends below, or just singing for the fun of it. I sat alone and watched them for about half an hour. I was mesmerized. I didn’t want to leave.

They arrange themselves in stripes across the vast semi-dry lakebed. Once they are on the ground they mostly quit calling.

This is out of focus, but shows their beautiful red heads and eyes.

We saw other shore birds—lots of ducks, teals, and wading birds. Here are pictures of a couple of my favorites:

American Coots and the head of a Cinnamon Teal (“Bring me the head of a cinnamon teal!”)

These guys below are called Northern Shovelers. Their bills look exactly like shoehorns. They have beautiful red eyes.

Tohono Chul Park Year-end Birds 2011

Though fall migration is over and spring migration is several weeks away, we’ve had some terrific birding at the Park during the last two weeks. This beautiful Harris hawk, hanging out in the big eucalyptus at the north end of the Park was a nice surprise. In addition to the Harris hawk, we’ve seen the following “regulars” and winter visitors:

Abert’s towhee, green-tailed towhee, black-tailed gnat-catcher, cactus wren, cardinal, Cooper’s hawk, Costa’s hummingbird, curve-billed thrasher, Gambel’s quail, Gila woodpecker, lesser goldfinch, house finch, house sparrow, kestrel, mockingbird, mourning dove, orange-crowned warbler, phainopepla, verdin, western bluebird, white-crowned sparrow. A special treat, at the west end of the Saguaro Discovery Trail, is an Anna’s x Costa’s hummingbird hybrid.

As for critters, we’ve seen several coyotes, along with lots of javelina tracks and bobcat scat. Happy holidays to everyone!

Fog

We’re having strange weather—according to NOAA, the coldest start to December since they’ve been keeping records. There’s been a fair amount of rain and it’s been quite cold—January cold. A couple of mornings ago we had a fog attack. It was stunning—you couldn’t see farther than across the yard. It was actually rather beautiful, though eerie:

All the birds looked cold. Here are some quail. And by the way, there are still a couple of dozen of them roosting in the front yard. Even better, a mockingbird is still roosting with them—or at least does so sometimes. I watched him fly into the pyracantha the other night to join his bigger buddies.

                  

Cactus Wrens in the 'Hood

I love, love, love cactus wrens, which are not only the State Bird of Arizona, they are the largest wrens in North America.

Many visitors to the Park are astounded at how big they are (around 8-9 inches). “That’s a wren?” Cactus wrens are bold and sassy, seemingly not much afraid of humans. Their voices are loud and raucous, with many calls, ranging from a guttural croak that sounds like a car trying to start its engine to a nasal twang, as if the bird is tuning a loosely-strung banjo.
At Tohono Chul Park, cactus wrens can be found pretty much everywhere, from the desert trails to the many gardens to the riparian area. Often, they are squabbling or actively looking for something to eat. The references say that they  primarily eat insects and other invertebrates, with a soupcon of fruit and seeds. I’ve never seen a cactus wren eat seeds, but here’s a picture of one eating organ pipe cactus fruit on the Texas Trail in the Park. I once watched a cactus wren pursue and overpower a medium-sized lizard, then grasp it in its beak and beat it to death. I saw similar behavior the other day on a bird walk, only in this case the hapless victim was a large green caterpillar, which the cactus wren swallowed in one gulp once it had been beaten into submission. I also  watched one peck a tarantula to death out on one of the Park’s desert trails. When I got closer to take a photo, the cactus wren grabbed his prize and moved it well away from the path, possibly assuming that I wanted to steal his breakfast.
Cactus wrens are well-known for the large (football-sized; roughly football-shaped), messy, enclosed  nests they build in cacti and sometimes trees. I once watched a cactus wren methodically break off the spines near the opening to a nest in a cholla. Presumably this was to prevent its babies from impaling themselves. They like to weave interesting and/or colorful found objects into the nest. I used to leave colored yarn for them in my former home. Here’s a great nest in a cholla at the Park that has been decorated with bits of facial tissue and either cellophane or Scotch tape.

Cool Things at Tohono Chul Park the third week in August

The weather has been extremely humid and hot, but I’ve seen a number of really wonderful things at the Park during my last few visits. Every bird walk has resulted in at least one beautiful and sometimes unexpected bird. For example, a couple of days ago a visitor and I saw and heard a gorgeous curve-billed thrasher. She was new to birding, and was thrilled to see a bird she’d only heard about. On that same visit, we saw a huge gopher snake near the Desert Living Courtyard.
  It was curlicued alongside the path, with its head just resting at the edge of a large rodent hole. It was so quiet at first I thought it might have been dead, but then I saw its tongue flick, as it smelled its breakfast-to-be.
On the way out of the Park, we saw a Greater Earless Lizard, the first I have seen in the Park. It was near the Overlook, and at first I thought it was just a large zebratail. It has actually lost its tail. Except for being tailless, it looks quite a bit like this beauty I photographed at Catalina State Park: The lizard at TCP is much brighter yellow. Quite a good-looking reptile. And speaking of yellow, on our bird walk Monday, my colleague Marcia and I saw a mystery flycatcher. I think it was a brown-crested, because of the size of its bill and the very yellow appearance of its belly, but it might have been an ash-throated. Those guys drive me crazy. Take a look. What do YOU think?

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.