The Lucy’s Warblers continue the symphony, broadcasting from the Concertgebosque at those same northern double gates at first light, though this day it’s all drowned out for a moment by a Stiffwing Hawk carrying passangers high overhead towards Tucson.

The Northern Mallards are gone, but Mexican Mallards have come back to The Stockpond. (This pair will be on the water most every day for the rest of the month.) White-crowned Sparrows have become rare enough that any lingering here are notable, this morning a pair of them drink at the pond’s edge; Lark Sparrows have by and large replaced the many wintering related species that’ve now left for the Plains or the Tundra or summer life Above the Rim.

Blue Grosbeaks, my … oh … my. There was a single one here for a day a week ago, but this morning the pastures are from out of the “blue” filled with them, they sit all along the wheel line axles taking in the luxury of this their Summer Place though the records have it that this shouldn’t have come about for a few more weeks. With them are many Lazuli Bunting (Nancy F. pointed out that the two birds, grosbeak and bunting, are in the same genus) no less beautiful or calling of one’s attention, and these should soon become more uncommon as they also leave for lands north of the Mogollon Rim but for now, they still seem to be everywhere I look.

In an afternoon Monet light, the gross of grosbeaks works over the heads of barley and oats going now to gold and going to grain, and that grass is alive with the birds who flutter while climbing the stalks from the ground to reach the fruiting spike, there pick out the goodies and are slowly lowered back to the ground as that stalk bends with the weight. A lone and very handsome male Redwing sits atop a wheel and watches all that going on below him.