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 …)