Delirious Ramblings

Tecolote - Great Horned Owls Lying in State

In the main stairwell of the Cline Library on NAU campus there is a site-specific art display entitled Tecolote by student artist Eugene Brosseau. According to the the artist's information placard it is for an upper level art class here at the University and is meant to invoke questions about the impact of the Arizona/Mexico border issues on the people and animals living in the area. The positions of the little owl-coffins on a large topographic map of the border region (one north of the border, the other south) was intended to clue the viewer into that theme, I guess.

Tecolote, by Eugene Brosseau

But for me, as a birder, the first time I saw the piece the blank stares of the stuffed owls trapped my attention and I struggled to break contact with their hideous non-eyes. Finally they let let me go, leaving me profoundly sad for what had happened to the two birds. I just couldn't fit my memories of the live, vibrant Great Horned Owl I photographed at the Desert Museum with these flattened and lifeless husks. 

Tecolote - Great Horned Owl Under Glass

Somehow, I felt that the birds had been desecrated, their spirits imprisoned inside the little wooden coffins, the preserved bodies unable to pass through the stages of decomposition into flurries of windblown feathers, scattered bones, and ultimately dust as birds are meant to. It always saddens me when I see animals -- plants, too -- not being allowed to engage in their natural behaviors and life journeys. This reaction would seem to tie in with the piece's stated theme, namely natural processes being interrupted by human actions and desires. So I arrived at the artist's intended outcome but through a totally unexpected route.

Tecolote - Blank Gaze

I think this is what art is supposed to do: invoke strong gut-level emotional reactions, even if it isn't exactly what the artist originally intended.

Tecolote - Owl in Wood Coffin

So good job, Eugene. But those stuffed birds still creep me out!

Jacks Canyon Spotted Towhee

The above is a Spotted Towhee I photographed during a recent hike into Jacks Canyon, near The Village of Oak Creek. Spotted Towhee's are large sparrows with striking red eyes and coal-black hoods. They love hunting for seeds and invertebrates under dry bushes and other thick undergrowth, which is why it's so freakin' hard to get a clean photograph of one. I don't know how many bits I've wasted trying to get a decent snapshot of one only to find out later that the camera's autofocus had keyed-in on a blade of grass or a twig, leaving the subject blurry and out of focus.

Towhee's have a hilarious two-footed backwards hopping "scratch" that they use to uncover seeds. The one in the picture above would hop-scratch over and over, practically digging a hole. After it moved on I went over to see what it was looking for but I couldn't find anything.

The gods, they have forsaken us

I've often wondered why people put up a bird feeder, faithfully fill it every morning throughout the warm months, and then abruptly stop when winter comes and the birds need it most...

Yellow-headed Blackbird: A beakful of dragonflies

The title of this post would seem to indicate that I was going to write some cheesy spaghetti western account of a new bird species, but in reality it's just another one of my infrequent birding photo essays.

Over on the Kaibab National Forest near Williams there are several lakes/ponds and along one of the shorelines we photographed this Yellow-headed Blackbird. It was walking slowly along the water's edge, presumably hunting for insects. It's search had already been successful as it's beak was full of dragonflies. Yuck!

Yellow-headed Blackbirds are pretty common around lakes and marshes in the west. However, I've never seen one at any of the lakes near Flagstaff - just the more common Red-winged Blackbirds. The Yellow's live in the same habitat, eat the same food, and are dominant over the Red-wings (of which we have plenty), so it's not clear why we don't have any of these guys in our lakes.

This bird is a male Yellow-headed Blackbird as evident by the bright yellow head. The female of this species is a duller black and brown with a much paler yellow patch only on the breast and throat.

White-breasted Nuthatch and Pine Siskin visit the watering hole

We were up at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon last weekend and in addition to taking in the views of the canyon itself I managed to get some birding in as well. While walking a portion of the rim trail we stopped for a rest and I noticed a puddle of water left over from the previous day's rains. It didn't take long for some old friends to show up: a White-breasted Nuthatch and a Pine Siskin:

White-breasted Nuthatches and their smaller cousins the Pygmy Nuthatches are a couple of my favorite bird species. They are quite common in the high country and you're practically guaranteed to see them pretty much anywhere you go. I love watching them creep face first down the trunks of trees, poking around in the bark for insects.

This one had some sort of bug in its beak - probably a large fly - that it brought down to the water. It's hard to say if it wanted to wash it off before eating it or maybe it just wanted a drink handy for after its meal.

Nuthatches have a very distinctive call -- sort of a fast wik-wik-wik-wik-wik sound. I've noticed that they like to pal around with Mountain Chickadees up in Flagstaff, so if you see or hear nuthatches the chickadees probably aren't far away. The reverse also generally holds true.

The Pine Siskin didn't want to share the water hole with the White-breasted Nuthatch so it didn't hang around long. Pine Siskins are finches - note the conical beak used for eating seeds. For a long time I confused Pine Siskins with female House Finches, which are of similar size and have very similar brown and white-streaked patterns. I used to wonder why there were so many female House Finches showing up to my feeder and relatively few males. It wasn't until I noticed that some of those "females" had yellow on their wings and some didn't that I realized I was looking at two different species.

White-faced Ibis at Schultz Tank

I took Friday off and spent most of the day hiking around the Dry Lake Hills, north of Flagstaff. The weather was a bit windy so there weren't many birds around, but I did manage to photograph a new wader, something I wasn't expecting to see way up there: a White-faced Ibis at Schultz Tank.

My Sibley field guide says these guys are common, nesting in colonies with herons in low trees or reeds. I personally haven't seen many of them around but I suppose that's probably just me not having done much birding near water. This particular Ibis was methodically working it's way around one edge of Schultz Tank, taking slow, deliberate steps and probing the grass with its long down curved bill - presumably for frogs or other aquatic prey. The distinctive white border around the reddish face (which isn't very clear in these long-distance photos) indicates that this is an adult in full breeding plumage.

Here's a close-crop with a slightly better view of its face:

Look at the bill on that bad-boy (or girl)!

Schultz Tank is full to the brim with recent snow melt and really quite beautiful. If you look closely at the picture below, on the far shore directly under the middle pine tree is a brown dot: that's the Ibis.

I could've spent all day just sitting there on the shore soaking up the view but I had miles to go and more stuff to see so I reluctantly put away the camera, shouldered my pack, and headed back up the trail into the forest.

This male house finch is too sexy for...

I didn't expect to see many birds on my Sunday morning Elden hike due to the high winds, and I was right: There were no birds out at all except for a few irritated-sounding Steller's Jays (but those guys always sound irritated) and some House Finches near the trail head parking lot. All the other birds were off sheltering in the forest from the strong wind gusts.

One of the male finches perched on a nearby tree branch and proceeded to strut his fiery red stuff while I went into full fashion show paparazzi mode:

Male House Finches turn bright red from pigments in their food. The redder the male the more attractive he will be to females. The red coloration apparently shows the female that he will be able to provide food for the chicks.

As he bounced around and preened that stupid "I'm Too Sexy" song from Right Said Fred got stuck in my head. AAAAHHHHHHHHGGGGGHHH!

He perched there for a surprisingly long time. I suspect that what was really happening was I'd interrupted his breakfast and he was waiting for me to leave so he could resume eating.

Red-shafted Flicker in Dry Beaver Creek

Here's a picture of what I believe is a male Red-shafted Northern Flicker I took down in Dry Beaver Creek south of Sedona a couple weeks ago. It was perched on that tree for over five minutes, idly looking around for who knows what.

This is a male bird as it has the red malar stripe which female Flickers lack.

When I was in the field I initially thought that it was a Gilded Flicker - another subspecies of Flicker that is resident in Arizona and that I haven't photographed yet. I mean, I really wanted this bird to be a Gilded and that desire, combined with just enough ambiguity, led me to misidentify it as a Gilded. It's funny how that works.

Unfortunately, the reddish undertail and well-defined black dots on its belly makes it difficult to build a very strong case for a Gilded. If this were a Gilded the dots would be more bar-like and there should be yellow or gold visible on the edges of the wings from this angle. Also, according to Sibley the cinnamon coloration on the forehead should continue across the crown of the head and down the nape, which it doesn't look to do in the following picture where there seems to be a lot of gray visible:

So, as much as I really wanted this bird to be a Gilded, I'm going to go with a probable identification of a Red-shafted Northern Flicker.

Juniper Titmouse at the Cibola Pass

I spent most of the day birding the trails in north Sedona and I finally managed to photograph a Juniper Titmouse, something I've been trying to do for a long time. Juniper Titmice are small, fast birds related to Chickadees and they're every bit as difficult to photograph.

This one was jumping from branch to branch in one of its namesake juniper trees and I just managed to trip the shutter release before it flew away. It's not the greatest picture but you can clearly make out the bird's beautiful crest and the gray-brown feathers on its lower back indicative of an adult.

Juniper Titmice are fairly common around Sedona where you can see them flitting about in the Pinon-Juniper forests north of town. I've seen them on the Brins Mesa, Jim Thompson, and now the Cibola Pass trails.

These little guys eat insects from the bark and foliage of trees as well as seeds from the ground. Note the shortish all-purpose bill which is similar to the Chickadee's, which means they have basically the same diet. And like Chickadees, they have super-strong legs and feet so they can hang upside down and walk vertically up and down the trunks of trees. It's an amazing feat, something I'm sure rock climbers jumaring their way slowly up fixed ropes wish they could replicate!

Until 1996 the Juniper Titmouse and the Oak Titmouse (found only along the west coast) were considered a single species: the Plain Titmouse.

One of these things is not like the other

Courtesy of the Great Recession and mandatory furlough days at work I was able to spend the morning snowshoeing in Sinclair Wash and the Rio de Flag. There were two large groups of Canada Geese, some American Coots, and a few Mallards hanging out at the waste water treatment plant pond. The water may not smell so good but the water fowl love it because it's generally ice-free all winter.

These geese were kind enough to allow me to photograph them:

I really like Canada Geese - probably because I enjoyed Fly Away Home and haven't had to clean up after them.

After the geese tired of me photographing them they paddled over to the other side of the pond and I continued on down the Rio de Flag. We had a fast moving storm move through yesterday and it looks to have dropped nine or ten inches of fresh powder.

Here's a shot looking up towards Mt. Elden. Brrrr! It's cold up there!

Somewhere behind me a cross-country skier flushed the geese - which was quite rude of him - and I heard the birds honking madly. Seconds later the two flocks flew over, already assembling into neat formations:

 

Seeing them fly overhead so effortlessly made me suddenly accutely aware of the irresistible force of gravity pressing me to the ground. For a second I wished I could kick off those heavy snowshoes and boots, toss aside the poles and camera gear and surge up off after them into the air. Hey, wait up, guys!

Still, glad to be outside, I pushed on. After another few minutes of sweating and straining against the snow I reached my goal:

South of Little America the Rio de Flag opens up into a large meadow. There are some rustic old fence posts and some sort of corral back there. In the summer you can sometimes see deer and elk in the field and the birding is great, especially if there's still water in the creek bottom.

This was the two mile point for me so not wishing to overdo it I turned back. Today was four miles on the snowshoes: probably a record, especially in fresh powder. The weather service says there are still two more storms heading our way so it's likely I'll be cooped up inside until at least the weekend.