Hitting a Big Speed-Bump!

As written in the title I have hit a speed-bump in my blogging. Luckily I have finally gotten past the bump, but I am now catching up on my past birding posts. So I am putting my highlight photos from January and late December (out of my patch)  in this post.

 

On December 23rd I did a Christmas Bird Count with Mr. Troy Corman at Tres Rios. Out of the many highlights, I photographed these two awesome birds.

 

Chestnut-sided Warbler--Lifer!

White-throated Sparrow --one of two

 

On New Years Day I had an awesome morning of birding at Lake Pleasant with Mr. John Kafel. I got three lifers that morning, they were Common Loon, Black Scoter (2), and a White-winged Scoter.

 

I wonder which one's the White-winged?

Male Black Scoter--note the orange is starting to appear on the bill

Female left, male right

White-winged Scoter

 

My next amazing day of birding was on the 21st when Mr. Tommy Debardeleben and I joined forces to bird at the world renowned Thrasher Spot  as well as the Arlington area and my Patch. Here are some of the photos from the trip.

 

Bell's Sparrow--note that the maler is darker than its face

 

Sagebrush Sparrow--note that its maler is the same color as its face

 

 

LeConte's Thrasher

 

 

Bendire's Thrasher

 

Crissal Thrasher

 

 Sage Thrasher

 

 On January 31st I was supposed to lead a birdwalk to the Arlington and Buckeye areas, but due to a possibility of rain that day no one wanted to come. That all changed when I got an E-mail from Mr. Gordon Karre, that he would still like to do the walk, and so would Ms. Susan Fishburn, Ms. Babs Buck, and Ms. Barbara Meding. Once I got this E-mail I was pumped! So on the 31st I went birding with some fun people and had a fun time. Although the lighting wasn't good I was able to snap a couple of decent shots.

 

Burrowing Owl

 

Peregrine Falcon

 

You can expect some more old posts in the near future, but hopefully I will be caught up soon. 



The early and the late: A treck for the Bell's

On October 11th I took a trip with fellow birders Mr. Tommy Debardeleben, Mr. Laurence Butler, and Mr. Gordon Karre. Our target bird was the Bell's Sparrow, Mr. Tommy took a trip out to Robbin's Butte to scout the area and found around twelve and only one or two Sagebrush!!! Just incase some of you don't know the Sage Sparrow has been split in two species, the Bell's and the Sagebrush Sparrows. The Sagebrush is much more common than the Bell's. There are only a couple spots in Maricopa County where you can find both in a day, and one of those spots is the Thrasher Spot located in west Buckeye. When we parked the car and walked a little ways we could hear a couple Sage Sparrows calling but we could not tell what species they were without seeing them. We noticed a strange behavior that the sparrows stay low early in the morning but around 8:00AM the sparrows started coming higher in the bushes and scattered trees, this same behavior happened when Mr. Tommy was here a couple days before. Out of the six Bell's Sparrows I was able to shoot one quick photo of one of the birds, it might not be the best but you can see a bit of the birds plain back and the dark maler.

 As we were on the treck for the Bell's, Mr. Laurence found a pair of mating Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes under a mesquite.

On our way back to the car I saw something move right behind Mr. Tommy and I looked in the bush and found a Gopher Snake! So I dropped to the ground and after about a minute of untagling the snake from the bush I caught it! Here is a photo Mr. Laurence took for me.

There was also a late Western Kingbird that decided to stop by.

Our next stop was the Arlington Wildlife Area. On our way there we saw what happened to be the all time highlight of the day!

While we were on our way to Arlington Mr. Tommy saw a flock of birds, and he quickly called them Rock Pigeons!!! When he called them out everyone reached back for their binocs and cameras (and yes there were a few fists and elbows thrown around) and we photographed Arizona's first ever Rock Pigeons!!!

Unfortunatly, I don't know if you noticed but that wasn't the true story, It was more like this.

Mr. Tommy yelled Rock Pigeons and everyone laghed at them. Good story huh?!

You pick what story you like better, anyways back to the trip! When we arrived at the road that leads to the Arlington Wetlands we saw it had been flooded out by the recent storms, so we took our own detour which ended up with some nice birds. Before we reached the wetlands we saw a Lewis's Woodpecker take flight in the opposite direction from us, of course! Once we reached the wetlands we were greeted by quite a few Cassin's Kingbirds.

Arlington had a few highlights including Sora, Virginia Rail, Least Bittern (all audio), Green-winged Teal, and Crissal Thrasher.

From left to right: Mr. Laurence, Mr. Tommy, and Mr. Gordon

We then had to start heading back, I then noticed a high flying Common Black Hawk!

Here are a few extremely cropped photos.

The CBHA was a pretty late migrant and it was strange to see in this habitat, but it was most likely just migrating through like most of the birds we saw. Thanks for the awesome morning af birding Mr. Tommy, Mr. Gordon , and Mr. Laurence I had a blast!!! Here are a few photos to close out this post.

Northern Harrier

 

Black-crowned Night-Heron

 

Greater Roadrunner