Tag Archives: Raptors & vultures

March 14, 2013

Nature Jottings,

The near-tame male and two female Mallard were back on the pond, and while I watched them a fine-plumaged Green-winged Teal landed on the bank of the stockpond and took a very long time to feel at ease enough to enter the water. He was unlike any other individual of this species I’d ever seen: the shimmering cheek patches were the blue of azurite, rather than the usual malachite green.

At last!–a Turkey Vulture, first I’d seen of the year (though David O. reported some aloft a week before) … it was standing next to the pool in Pasture #1 where a leak has made a near permanent water area attractive to wildlife. The vulture was sunning with wings outstretched and it looked huge. It took off, circled up until it joined another, and then another came into the kettle, … and then another … who needs robins to warble Spring into being? We have zopilotes! In this country there is a pleasure in hearing the news get around in this our own local version of winning the ice-break-up date: “Hey, I saw the first vulture!” “Oh no you didn’t–I saw the first one yesterday!” I love how they look down from a dead snag with that put-out, cranky stare of theirs under an arched eyebrow, and think to themselves, “Oh bother!” and with that, projectile crap a stream of the most loathesome smelling stuff–keep your dogs and horses away, amigos. True Desert Noir, a life twisted, perversely humorous some could say …

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 …)