Yard Overview

Leafcutter Bee

Fiery Skipper

Wasp

Honey Bee Twins

The bees like the birdbath, everyone likes the lantana. Just wish there were more butterflies around this year.

Rosy-faced Lovebirds, occasional visitors

Gila Woodpecker

Curve-billed Thrasher Scratcher

Juvenile Verdin

There are a couple of juvenile Verdins who are happily feeding themselves but now there appears to be an even younger fledgling Verdin who still needs to be fed by a parent. This is it flapping its wings and begging for food:

And it got fed, again and again…

And here’s an interesting little family of Abert’s Towhees:

Here is one of the adults feeding a juvenile Towhee:

And here is the same adult feeding its foster baby, a Brown-headed Cowbird!

The Brown-headed Cowbird is North America’s most common “brood parasite.” A female cowbird makes no nest of her own, but instead lays her eggs in the nests of other bird species, who then raise the young cowbirds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). They evolved this way because centuries ago this bird followed bison herds on the Great Plains, feeding on insects flushed from the grass by the grazers, and so did not have time to nest the normal way. Some people hate them and think they are “evil,” because heavy parasitism by cowbirds has pushed some species to the status of “endangered” and has probably hurt populations of some others (Audubon). I think it’s pretty interesting behavior.

Brown-headed Cowbird, juvenile

Anna’s Hummingbird, male

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A Visit to DBG

Verdins (yellow-headed one is an adult)

On another unseasonably cool day in Phoenix, we went back to the Desert Botanical Garden. Here are some of the sights.

Cholla with Fruit

Cardons (native to northwestern Mexico)

Gila Woodpecker, male

Artichokes

See the bee, above?

Gaillardias

Cactus Wren (Arizona State Bird)

Crested Saguaro

Prickly Pear blooms

Saguaro blooms (Arizona State Flower)

Mourning Dove juveniles

Look what we saw! If it hadn’t been cloudy, the photos would have been much better but it’s the first time I ever got one without branches in front of it. It was also very windy that day!

Great Horned Owl

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Return to Seven Springs

Ash-throated Flycatcher

I met a very “confiding” bird when we went back to Seven Springs, north of Cave Creek, the other day. It really enjoyed being photographed, I think.

Some of its relatives were in a sycamore tree in one of the campgrounds. Ash-throated Flycatchers are secondary cavity nesters, meaning that they rely on nest holes originally made by other species, such as woodpeckers, or they use naturally occurring cavities in standing dead trees (Cornell). One guarded this nest while the other went to get food.

I got a lifer, only the second for 2019. Things have been tough. Bad shot:

Bewick’s Wren

It’s very lush there.

Verbena

Argentine Thistle plus Bee

Northern Mockingbird

This is what the above spot looked like in December 2017.

One more of my cooperative friend:

Previous visits to Seven Springs: December 2017 and April 2018.

 

Reach 11 Nature Trail

Greater Roadrunner with lunch

Reach 11, in north Phoenix, is part of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department but it exists for flood control. A 7-mile long earthen dam keeps flood waters out of the nearby canal and out of housing developments to the south. The area where the nature trails are is only about 1 mile wide. Amazingly, this place is not well-known at all. I only heard about it from some birders recently. Driving down the busy street where the entrance is, one would never know what a beautiful place it is. Someone described it as a “hidden gem,” and it really is. From the street it just looks like desert scrub.

This poor, old, decrepit saguaro is at the beginning of the trail. We saw a bird fly into it so stopped to watch.

Who’s that?

It’s a male Gila Woodpecker. There must be a nest in there.

He was kind of shy. But then we saw more action…

A European Starling. It had a nest in one of the center holes and kept flying in and out with food. We could hear babies chirping every time a delivery was made.

Then we saw someone else fly in the other side…

A Gilded Flicker (male) seems to have a nest, too…

We stayed on the trail and didn’t disrupt the nesters but I’m sure they were pleased we left. We also saw another Starling head into a hole in the back so this saguaro is home to at least 4 different nests now. Who knows what else might be living in there? The wind was really blowing hard and gusting while we were there so I hope when that poor saguaro falls that there are no nests left.

After we walked a little more, we started to see the “hidden gem” part of this area. It was very lush back in there, all sorts of grasses, wildflowers, etc.

There was a mesquite bosque and a little hidden pond in there, full of tadpoles, called Bullfrog Pond. It was really peaceful and pretty. No one was around but one biker.

Globe Mallow

Common Side-blotched Lizard

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

Anna’s Hummingbird

I know this place is teeming with birds and other wildlife but it was so windy that day that the birds were having a hard time staying airborne. It’s definitely a place we will return to as it’s only about 20 minutes from our house and very unique.

*The reason this recreation area is called “Reach 11” is because it’s on the 11th reach of the Central Arizona Project canal. Across the street from the nature trail is a huge sports complex with 20 soccer fields, an equestrian area, and more.

 

Lake Pleasant

We went to Lake Pleasant Regional Park, northwest of Phoenix, last week. What I mostly wanted to see were the wild burros and we did! The herd is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and there are anywhere from 480-600 from what I’ve read. They are descendants of burros brought over from South Africa in the 1600s. 100 wild burros (jacks) were freeze marked and 55 jennies (female burros) were radio collared to help study and monitor the herd. Some are removed at times and put up for adoption while living and being cared for at a BLM facility. You can read more about this program here.

This is the trail we hiked to try to find them. We didn’t see any there but, fortunately, we saw them even before we started hiking. It was extra nice to see them with some wildflowers around; they looked especially cute frolicking through the flowers.

And we actually saw a few birds!

Say’s Phoebes

Rock Wrens

Red-winged Blackbird (female)

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher (at least the flowers are in focus)

And a few other critters crossed our path:

Painted Lady Butterfly

Checkered White Butterfly

Common Side-blotched Lizard (check out his tongue!)

And we saw the lake, too, of course! This is a lake I used to go sailing on back in the mid-1980s…all the time…almost every weekend for 3-4 years. Since then it has been enlarged a lot so it didn’t really look at all familiar. The lake now covers 10,000 acres and is fed by the Central Arizona Project Aqueduct which diverts water from the Colorado River as well as the Agua Fria River. It was pretty cloudy when we were there and not many boats were on the lake.

New Waddell Dam

The new dam submerged the older, much smaller dam.

This is a 4 shot panorama of the lake. You can see a larger version of it on my Flickr. It was fascinating to see how the lake has changed, I loved everything we saw.

Globe Mallow

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