Birding
Where I've been/What I've seen
Welp what do you know? I procrastinated and school got in the way so this is going to be coming a long at a lot slower rate than I had hoped. Anyways, without further adieu I present Day 3 of 11 of Camp Chiricahua.
The tire was fixed late in the afternoon of that day, and we still had over three hours to go, not including a stop(s) for dinner and naturalisting. We essentially made a beeline for a Pizza Hut and arrived at around eight. In the parking lot, we found an Eastern (curviostre) subspecies Curve-billed Thrasher, an unusual, fairly far west location for one. After eating some food, we all went back to the vans and continued onward to the Chiricahua Mountains. Of course, our bad luck streak had to continue. Upon reaching New Mexico we promptly got stuck in a traffic jam on a two-lane road in a very rural area. To entertain ourselves, we decided to listen to terrible remixes of memeable songs, most notably AHA’s “Take On Me” and Smash Mouth’s “All Star”. After sitting in traffic for probably over an hour, we were finally free and heading back into Arizona (fun fact, we started on 7/13, and due to the one hour time difference between NM and AZ we traveled an hour ahead into 7/14, before going back into 7/13). It had become late on these rural roads, so those of us who were still awake managed to get out of the vans and see both a couple of owls (Barn and Great-horned) along with a couple varied bugs/mammals. By the time we finally reached Cave Creek, it was 11:57. We quickly decided to go to bed, and thankfully the wake up time was postponed slightly the next day.
0 Comments
For dinner, we all went under the nearby picnic structure where we sketched while waiting for quesadillas. Getting the checklists was quite fun. We waited for a break in the rain before a few of us a run for it and snagged all the ones we could find. We brought them all back and checked off all the birds that we had seen that day. Later that night, Jennie taught us a bit about night vision while we were owling, an attempt that yielded unsuccessful due to yet another oncoming monsoon. We went to bed knowing the next day was going to have a focus on getting to the Chiricahuas and would be another long day.
As is usual with birding, an early wake-up time seems to always be required. For this first day of camp, I was up and out the door at 5:00, to be at the airport by 5:30, and to then catch my 6:30 flight to Vegas. In Vegas, I had a two-hour layover, where I had to navigate aisles of gambling machines to get to the next flight, a direct to Tucson. I arrived in Tucson at around 10:30, where I soon managed to find Michael O’Brien, one of the tour leaders that I would be with for the next one and a half weeks. I grabbed my surprisingly light duffle bag and found the other campers, several of whom I knew from previous camps, as well as online connections. It took a bit for the final campers to arrive from the east coast, but soon enough we were able to all walk to the vans for a more formal introduction and icebreaker. My first bird of the trip was the ever-common House Sparrow, but that was quickly followed by Verdin, Eurasian Collared-Dove, and a high-soaring Swainson’s Hawk. By now, it was around lunchtime, so we went to the nearby Wendy’s to get some food before heading up Mt. Lemmon. This might have been the most productive parking lot I’ve ever been in, producing birds such as Cactus Wren, Broad-billed Hummingbird, Hooded Oriole, and Cassin’s Kingbird (a lifer for many in the group).
This past week I visited the Hawaiian islands of Maui and Lana'i, two islands in a chain which tourists view as exotic and beautiful. Now, most of these tourists don't realize the cost of this "exoticism" within the islands is, extensive habitat loss, avian malaria, and predation from introduced species (i.e. cats) to the island chain. Hawaii for these reasons, is known as the "bird extinction capital of the world", with 71 species going extinct, and another 24 vanishing since James Cook's "discovery" of the islands. This trip, I tried to focus a bit more on appreciating the native Hawaiian birds which still exist, for they still remain some of the most threatened in the world.
The next morning, I walked over to this “bird-sanctuary” and discovered it to be a Wedge-tailed Shearwater breeding ground. I immediately checked eBird to see if they had been seen there recently, and sure enough, just six days prior there had been eighty or so seen. After a day filled with snorkeling (more to come on that later), I came back just before sunset to try to see them coming back. Unfortunately, it was time for dinner just before when they would usually arrive, so I had to head out just before. It took much convincing of my parents to let me go back there in the dark, but the effort did not go to waste. At least forty of the shearwaters were there by the time I got back there, some sitting only feet away, and others curiously waddling up to me. For how skittish shearwaters like these can be on the ocean, they were indifferent to me right near their burrows. The next day was the main birding day of the trip, so I went back up to the room a little early and slept.
This past weekend, I drove out to Anza-Borrego for the first time, up and down the curvy roads of the mountains until I arrived. To not let a nearly two hour drive go to waste, I decided to check out some of the local birding spots around there, just to catch up on some of the desert birds that I had not quite seen yet this year. The first spot I visited was just a quick trip to the Anza-Borrego State Park Visitor Center, a nice, quick, reliable spot to see many of the more common birds that reside in the deserts of San Diego County. There I encountered a personal favorite, a Black-throated Sparrow, as well as Verdin, Yellow and Wilson’s Warblers, and numerous Costa’s Hummingbirds. This was a fairly quick stop for me, as I had seen practically all the birds that I wanted to almost immediately, and on the way out I saw a Cactus Wren flying from one cholla to the next. . I then drove for around ten minutes to get to Mesquite Bosque, a place I had never birded before. Mesquite Bosque was...interesting to say the least. At the end of the road where I parked there was an abandoned little one-story house, with an old limousine parked in the side yard along with boats and cars in the very visible back yard. I continued to walk out into the bosque itself, with dead mesquite trees lining an old sand road that I used to get where I needed to go. A burnt down house was among one of the other things I noticed while walking along here, along with many trashed electronics, not limited to but including refrigerators, old, boxy TVs, and many other things that had been so scrapped, their original state was almost impossible to determine. I approached a clearing in the bosque, where the dirt flattened out and became firm, and the vegetation thinned out. I decided to look in the bushes for birds, and was not disappointed. A MacGillivray’s Warbler, a new bird for San Diego county for me decided to show itself, however hopping deep into the center before I could snap a photo of it. A few Western Tanagers flew over, their bright orange faces contrasting with their neon-yellow bodies and black wings. I went east from this point, trying to find the coordinates that a friend had sent me of where to possibly find a Crissal Thrasher. I continued to bird and head in that general direction and encountered a lone Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, not very cooperative, but some of the better looks that I have had of the species. I had just about given up on the Crissal Thrashers when I heard one far in the distance. Because Crissal Thrashers are incredibly loud, I decided not to try to find it, for it could be quite a ways away, and I accepted just hearing it for this trip out. I began the long walk back to the car, and along the way decided I wanted to make my last stop of the day Tamarisk Grove, a campground where I have had much luck in the past year.
Last month, I headed up to the mountains of San Diego for the first time this year with fellow young birder Max leading the way (driving, as usual). After a quick car trip to Lake Cuyamaca, we got out of the car and unsuccessfully tried to look for previously reported Cassin’s Finches. We unfortunately dipped on them, probably due to the cold, breezy weather (there was somehow snow in the parking lot). However, we did pick up the continuing Greater White-Fronted Goose, with extraordinary views of under ten feet, and picked up the highest rated photo of the species for California on eBird. At the lake I also picked up a few year birds, including Violet-green Swallow and Canvasback, two birds of some difficulty to get near the coast, but much easier at higher elevations in the county. We continued to look for the Cassin’s Finches for quite some time before giving up and moving on to Stonewall Mine, on the other side of the lake.
This was a super fun day, and considering it’s the last time I went birding (a month as of today), I most certainly am not taking it for granted.
|
Categories
All
Archives
July 2019
|