Tag Archives: Orioles

May 10, 2013

An oriole is piping in the bosque despite the cold before sunrise–and cold it is, the upper 30s again! Yet by mid-afternoon the air will reach the mid-80s. Myself I’m grousing, not piping, over having to get wet in setting up the early sprinkler irrigation. The pair of Mexican Mallards that are on The Stockpond these mornings are swimming and foraging when I arrive, but are gone when I get back to the pump to check pressure and oil drip. I’m sure they take off when the water comes shooting out of the pond outlet with the noise of Old Faithful. This becomes their habit during this period of irrigation, and they often don’t return before I leave at day’s end. The gush of water doesn’t bother the Spotted Sandpiper cutting a rumba along the shore, it must be grateful to find this mud no matter how cold it is, or how noisy the riser’s spray or ominously moans the sniffer that lets air pressure out ahead of the nose of the water rushing down the main. All the Yellow-rumped Warblers seem gone, or at least their absence is conspicuous. I expect they’ve found streams and conifers more to their liking now high in those mountains above us, in the Rincon and the Santa Catalina and the Pinalenos.

Not a male, but a female, Redwing sits on a wheel today. She shows orange before the eye, and a little red shoulder herself and both make her sure-enough pretty as the male is handsome. It’s a monsoon sky overhead full of beautiful clouds that long ago had became rare, and late in the day there is thunder from afar. Is this all we’re going to be getting out of Mini Monsoon this year?

April 17, 2013

The male Mallard still alone at the Stockpond, and in the outmost mesquital beyond and nearer the River, a fine Bullock’s Oriole, a much later than usual arrival of this “neotropical”. Many Yellow-rumped Warblers in splendid and bright marriage garb, coming down to the pond edge for a drink, or hunting through the pasture grass pipit-like. This is too beautiful a bird to be tossed off with an, “Oh, just Butter-butts”, by the Life List Set that comes to Arizona to seek out our famous avian rarities. Normally that warbler’s numbers are larger earlier, and smaller by now, but this is turned on its head; they are everywhere.

Out in the deep winter pastures, another warbler: Yellowthroats are rising, flying off, and dropping into the grass, much like the Marsh Wrens who are not to be seen today.

Our little mixed herd of a couple dear old cows, steers and heifers for grassfed beef, and heifers we’ll keep, race out and kick up their heels in joy over coming into new grass that will be grazed for the first time, in this late afternoon of air that whispers change. The temperature twenty degrees lower than yesterday’s, the day cool but lively, and this beautiful sunset all is very quiet, so quiet the contented munching of the herd carries far and I bask in an all-is-well bucolic sweetness. The air all around and over them is electric, beryl-green, shot through with gold, Barn Swallows swirl and chitter through that air, and snap at the insects the cows as they move stir into flight. A moment of great contentment for those golondrinas, the cows, and me.

March 30, 2013

Gray Hawks have moved into the Mason Pastures–swooping in from behind along The Lane, low through the branches at the stockpond, whistling mournfully from the gallery forest along The River. Willows are in fresh, but small, leaf and most of the cottonwood look to be in their full summer emerald already.

Hooded Orioles are chattering at El Potrero, but not a sign or sound of them at Mason’s yet. They seem also late of arrival this year, like so many other birds.