All posts by Cindy Salo

March 11, 2013

Nature Jottings, , , , , ,

Roadrunner giving out its deep descending cooing, territorial notes. It’s at this time that one can tell the bird is a cuckoo after all, from that tone and cadence of the sounds.

Black Phoebe always at the stock pond, flying out and snatching bugs and swinging back to a low branch over the water’s edge. In January when the pond had frozen deeply enough that one could walk over it, the bird often perched out on the ice, chipping at the surface and I’d guess, with no open water anywhere for days, was swallowing down tiny bits of ice.

Watched a Cooper’s Hawk swoop in on some Gambel’s Quail, picked out one it thought made an attractive lunch. The quail vanished in screaming panic through the thick mesquites, the hawk disappeared in close pursuit and off they went into history.

The immature Bald Eagle Ralph W. and I had a thrilling look at farther south a couple weeks ago came soaring high over the fields, and drifted north over the valley and out of sight.

Now a set of five Rough-winged Swallow in the sunset light of the pastures as I closed down the irrigation for the night … and as dusk came in, numbers of two different bats (Small Bat … Big Bat … who knows the correct spp.?) swooping in to drink from the stockpond. Poorwill everywhere in the headlights as I drove out along The Lane, and then others in the Cascabel Road. (Already abundant it had seemed, but they’ve about vanished again by this date of April 1st–though I am hearing them at night here and there …)

March 9, 2013

Nature Jottings, , ,

Six female Blue-winged Teal on stockpond, though jittery didn’t take wing as I did my rounds near.

A Least Sandpiper worked the mud edges of the stockpond, sometimes taking short butterfly-like flights but not flying off as I walked the banks and looked over the loafing cattle herd.

Single female Vermillion Flycatcher arrived.

One of the few Yellow-rumped Warbler of the whole winter, still in drab plumage, flitting along The Lane’s mesquite branches. There were almost none of this usually abundant bird to be seen anywhere in Cascabel this year, usually one doesn’t remark on its presence.

March 6, 2013

Nature Jottings, ,

White-winged Dove were cooing their summer notes, and Say’s Phoebe giving spring music on S-J’s Cascabel Pasture. This phoebe is common at Mason’s and pairs of them have been courting there for a while but haven’t been singing in this way, and at Mason’s the dove is neither to be seen nor heard yet. (Both these things will hold true right through to the end of the month …)

Two more Rough-winged Swallow over the Mason pastures in the late sun.

March 4, 2013

Nature Jottings,

A single Rough-winged Swallow appeared, heart-gladdening though of course this does not a summer make; it’s worthy of remark at this early date but expected to be downright common soon enough. Then a single full-plumaged Vermillion Flycatcher from out of nowhere–both these the first of their species I’ve seen anywhere this year and now I’m rethinking whether summer isn’t indeed being “made” today.

Tumbleweed seedlings just sprouting, in masses on south slope of a berm in #2 (north) pasture.

March 2, 2013

Nature Jottings,

A Poorwill in the headlights, flying up from The Lane and on ahead to land again. First of year I’d seen anywhere, and a couple weeks ahead of the bird’s usual reappearance, for this date might be considered rarer than rare, i.e., “casual.”

Flocks of about 40 Western Meadowlark moving about from pasture to pasture during the day, and often flushed as I walk about through the bermuda grass at dark when I’m emptying wheel line hoses of their day’s water to avoid the problem of frozen lines and sprinkler heads in the morning … I’d love to have the odd leisure moment to go through determining the bird is definitely this species (as opposed to Eastern Meadowlark), measure the length of an eyebrow stripe and so on; instead I can work from the descriptions of both these species’ movements in the Tucson Audubon book “Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona” and I call these meadowlarks Westerns. Then of course one comes on statements from other sources saying there are intermediate appearances between both of them, and even songs that are neither classically one nor the other. No hard “species” edges here–and so much for the precision of Life Lists?

March 1, 2013

Nature Jottings

Five Mallard floating among thin sheets of ice on the stockpond–one typical male in fine spring plumage and two females and among these three birds there were bills of yellow, orange, and orange with a black saddle. The other two Mallards were “Mexican,” one having a green bill and the other yellow. [..]