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

 

Birding the Glendale Recharge Ponds (The quest for 250)

On August 5th I took a trip to the Glendale Recharge Ponds with my friends Mr. Joe Ford and Mr. Paul Doucett. My main goal was to find at least one year bird, to finally reach 250, which was my year list last year. When we first arrived we found many Lazuli Buntings in the reeds, we waited a bit to see if the buntings would come closer but they didn't. We then parked at the east parking lot and a young male Costa's Hummingbird greeted us with his bright colors.
                                                              Costa's Hummingbird

We then headed to the ponds and started scanning. The first shorebird we saw (after the Killdeer) was the Long-billed Dowitcher which were now in their beautiful breeding plumage or at least most of them were. You can see the non-breeding bird in the back.
                                                              Long-billed Dowitcher

Along with the dowitchers were a couple of Least Sandpipers.
                                                                       Least Sandpiper

There were also a couple of very entertaining Wilson's Phalaropes swimming around.
                                                              Wilson's Phalarope

As we scanned the ponds I quickly found my FOY Baird's Sandpiper feeding with the peeps. This photo that I am going to show you might not be the best photo but this is my 250th bird for this year, it's time to celebrate!!!!!!
                                                                       Baird's Sandpiper
 
 It was a great relief to finally get 250.  Yes, I knew I was going to beat it sooner or later but the sooner the better. Now every year bird after this bird is just icing-on-the-cake as they say! I spent quite a bit more time observing my 250th bird, but I knew that I must press on and hopefully find another year bird. One of my target birds was the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher X Western Kingbird hybrid, but I came up empty handed. I looked through every kingbird looking for him, without luck here are a few of the birds I came up with while I was on the chase.
                                                               Western Kingbird

                                                        Ash-throated Flycatcher

                                                    Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

                                                        Black-chinned Hummingbird

                                                                      Osprey

We spent a total of four and a half hours birding the ponds, with a total of about 60 species of bird! A new record for Mr. Paul, and I got my 250, we were all happy!
Here are a few Canada Geese to close out this post.
                                                                      Canada Geese