Tag Archives: Meadowlarks

May 16, 2013

Seventeen days after the last one was sighted, a Meadowlark is by itself out on the pastures! A lingering Western, or an odd summering Eastern?

Lark Sparrows are in court-n-spark mode, a male and female are singing together like two leads in an opera. He lets out with the sweetness of a canary, and jumps from the ground onto the spokes of an irrigator wheel, climbing them one by one, jumping from one side of the wheel across to the other while spreading his tail, sometimes the feathers wide into a complete fan, and as he reaches the top of the wheel, stretches upwards as far as his neck can extend while he’s singing. She stays below, twittering, joyful.

Ellison and I have our lunchtime at The Stockpond. The 96 degree afternoon brings in a female hummingbird to sip from the open water–she’s desperate enough to forgo whatever security her gender almost always seeks in sticking to the riser hydrant and avoiding the open water area. Instead of being dive-bombed and driven off by a male of her species, however, she is threatened by of all things, a dragonfly! One of those gaudy “saddle shoe” dragonflies (a Desert White-tail like yesterday’s, and maybe it’s the same individual) comes gliding innocently along below her, then rises quickly with obvious intent and attacks her again and again, but she escapes. If we hadn’t seen this with our own eyes … surely it couldn’t have been trying to prey on her, could it? (Much later I would do an Internet subject search on this, and found a number of just such incidents talked about, including one on an Audubon Society bulletin board webpage in which there was a reference to a film documenting a large dragonfly grabbing and carrying off a full-grown Rufous Hummingbird! Who knew?)

April 30, 2013

The glory of Arizona April ends with one last Meadowlark, who looks forlorn: surely he’s thinking of other climes and the bubbling companionship of his vanished mates. The pair of Mexican Mallards there on the Stockpond again today will probably stay on with us, this being their own Far North.

April 22, 2013

After that appearance of a single Chat yesterday, the mesquite is full of them, all calling, all in competition I guess for the choicest summer territory; it’s a wonderful Voz del Bosque. Wrens still aplenty today, and Meadowlarks appear again in numbers, mostly in #3 pasture.

April 16, 2013

Nicely above 80 degrees this afternoon, and that brought out the Zebra-tailed Lizards that so love the dryness and heat of the desert edges, with sand too hot to stand on so they move as if in flight over it, tails a waggin’ and twitchin’ and frothin’ back and forth. The Marsh Wrens are still here, I thought they’d have left on yesterday’s 20 mph hot winds; there are a few Meadowlarks who didn’t get pushed out by those winds, either.

Many Barn Swallows, of a sudden flying and twittering over the pastures.

April 12, 2013

One Mallard, the male, on the water today. A pair of Yellow Warblers are in chase with each other, around and around the Stockpond, and around … and around …

Another kingbird, I think a Western by its voice, arrived. Rough-winged Swallows have been increasing, but none over the pastures this whole day. There are a few Meadowlarks, though. Many Vesper Sparrows in the weedy edges and on the barbed wire crossfences, surely they are about to become more scarce; this was the most abundant of the wintering sparrows this year. The wrens, ah yes, the wrens, still tease in the pasture of lush winter graze, to which they’ve all moved over from a couple risers to the south. Seems they prefer yet-to-be-eaten-off, above-the-knee-deep bluegreen oats and barley, the cattle having gone into the wrens’ old area and taken it down to about one foot tall with all the efficiency of a tractor mower, leaving the stumpy culms from the tips of which will sprout a new shoot and then sets of leaves.

A fearless and friendly Gray Flycatcher pops up here and there as I do one chore or another, on a fenceline or in the mesquite tangled edges, pumping its tail as the species so distinctly does. They must be on the move, I hadn’t seen one the whole of winter here. Another species, an insect, came along today, one that in all other years I have seen in every month: the Tarantula Hawk. Those January days of a cold that froze over the Stockpond must’ve had an effect on their movements, if not their survival. It’s the first I’ve seen since Christmas.

Field Bindweed coming into bloom in the pastures–a noxious plant, but pretty as any hanging basket flower in a garden center and cattle are mad for it. Pat often wishes there were enough of it to bale, and use later.

A Red-tailed Hawk is acting like no other in my acquaintance, though the behavior is reported in mountainous territory with knife-edge ridges and strong updrafts. It was back again today, facing into the wind with all the moves of a Kestrel–barely flapping, suspended in one place with tail fanned out widely and using it brilliantly as rudder, hangs high up there for a long time, then drops like a stone from that place stationary in the strong spring gusts and onto some witless creature on the ground.

April 5, 2013

Song Sparrows, and Lark Sparrows, in increasing numbers come to drink or are seen in the pastures. The Song Sparrows are furtive and slip through the grass though also the wide-open edge of the Stockpond is much to their liking. The Lark Sparrows are bold and chatty, loud, with canary song to delight; they rise from the dirt tracks in a swirling cloud with the dust.

Almost a week on from when they’d started coming to the hummer feeders at El Potrero, a Black-chinned came this morning to hover over the middle of the Stockpond, drop to its surface, and take a long draught and then whir off. Yellow-rumped Warblers in elegant courting plumage came to the muddy edges to sip, too, and while Chris E. and I were lounging on the bank eating lunch, a completely unbothered Cooper’s Hawk also landed, and drank its fill, while a first spring large red dragonfly sailed out over the middle.

Not nearly so many Meadowlark as before, but still they’re here giving out their fluting notes and working over the grassland in shifts. A single Western Kingbird tells it’s about time for those meadowlarks to move away north. The wrens, meanwhile, are paying no attention to Kingbird’s hint that the bell’s rung and it’s time to change classes: the wrens are still well at home, and their species remains as mysterious in both pastures of green winter grass.

A species of White (butterfly) has emerged; they are few in number yet.

March 2, 2013

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?