The monthly post on my patch: November

November is one of the best months of the year to find rarities in Arizona. With myself only being a hardcore birder this year, (hardcore meaning: looking at the local blogs, rare-bird alerts, eBird reports, and the listserve a couple times a day) I did a lot of searching in a lot of new areas, but during the first week of my searching I came up patch-birdless. I must admit that the reason I was not finding many notable sightings on the first week was because I didn't have enough motivation. When someone goes out birding and wants to find a nice rarity, sure it's possible that you might find one while just taking a stroll through the old park, but if you want to clean house at a hotspot you have to bird hard!!! For instance almost all of the rare birds I have found near my house are from when I was exhausted, but decided to at least bird one more field, patch of weeds, or tree line. Now on November 8th I had just gotten back from one of the monthly birdwalks at Estrella Mountain Park lead by Mr. Joe Ford, I was a bit tired (just getting back from a concert the night/morning before) however, I pushed myself to take a birding trip around my patch. The main place that I birded for the evening was a pond that runs off from the Buckeye Canal. As I peeked through the thick vegetation that surrounds the ponds I found three American Wigeons feeding on the duckweed that covers the pond but once I looked to the right of the birds I saw a beautiful adult male Wood Duck!

Patch bird #192!                 

 

After observing this awesome patcher I walked down along the edge of the salt-bush bordered pond. When I got to the area where the duck was I could see it was already hiding.

 

 

Throughout the time that I observed this very handsome duck it never came out in the open for very long. In November I also took many trips down to the Gila River with good friend and wildlife-enthusiast,  Alexia. We found an awesome Great Horned Owl, I heard my patcher Least Bittern and Virginia Rail, we had a glimpse of a donkey (I have no idea whether it was wild or not), there were many signs of beaver, and we also found a lot of marsh habitat that I suspect is breeding territory for Ridgway's Rail.

 

 

With Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day rolling in my family was very busy with preparing,  but I was able to cram a few biking trips around the patch. On the 25th I went out birding to try to find some Sagebrush Sparrows. I found one area earlier in the month but after revisiting the spot the salt bushes looked to thin to have any SAGS's. As I continued birding I saw a large dark buteo perched on a tamarask I was already 90 percent sure that it was a RTHA but I got closer anyways. The bird then took flight,  but the area where the hawk was had a bit of greenery around it, so I said to myself "Ah, I might as well check it out". Here is a photo of this small wet patch.

 

 

Once I walked down near the patch of grass I saw what looked like a Swamp Sparrow but my looks were to brief and bad to call it for sure. As I walked around the area a little more I saw a small greenish-bird fly up into one of the tamarasks.

 

 

It only took one glimpse to find out  that it was a female Painted Bunting!!!

 

 

I was very exited as this bird is casual to uncommon in SEAZ but very rare to accidental in Maricopa County. On the following day I came back to this spot and showed Mr. Ford the bird.

 

 

Mr. Ford has seen many Painted Butings across North America including many males, but he has never seen one in AZ so this was a very nice bird for him. After getting back I gave Mr. Tommy D. a call and the next day we arrived at the bunting spot just after 7:00AM. It took the bunting a while to make it to the patch of grass but once it did we were stoked, this was a maricoper for Mr. Tommy, and to add onto all of the awesomeness it was Thanksgiving Day!!! 

 

Maricoper #365, Booya!!!

 

Two days later on the 29th I decided to try to dodge the weekend hunters and make my way over to the bunting and attempt to get some crushes on the bird. As soon as I reached the spot I could see the bird in the patch of grass, so I made my way down to the bird and started snapping away.

The "bunting patch"

After getting to observe the bird for a while I headed back to my house to end the day. On the 30th I took a trip to look for Sagebrush Sparrows some more and Lark Buntings as well. The SAGS's would be patchers and the LARB's would be lifers, so both of them would be good. Before I reached Cotton Lane I heard the distinctive "zeet" call of the Eastern Meadowlark and after scanning the field I was rewarded with good views and even a photo.

There was also a large flock of American White Pelicans that were flying over the river, but I was too focused on the meadowlark to take a photo of them. Once I crossed the river I biked back west only on the south side of the Gila. I came here before earlier in the month and saw hundreds of American Pipits in the fields that are surrounded by the desert. I was very pleased to find some awesome sage habitat and with sage-brush comes the Sagebrush Sparrows. So after birding the area I came up with over a dozen Sage Sparrows and I was able to identify a few Sagebrush out of them.

After observing the sparrows I started heading back as I was low on water, but I knew that I wasn't Lark Buntingless yet! There was one more area to check, sure enough as I was riding through my  last stretch of hope I had 5 of them flush up from the ground! The only problem is that I did not see where they landed, so I started searching the area, and after looking for a good ten minutes I found them foraging along the edge of the river.

As you can see in the above picture, the bird was very exited after it caught a grasshopper. I then had three of them fly up onto a tree right above where I left my bike!

 Once the birds flew up high into a eucalyptus I finally started heading back,  I took a quick stop by the bunting patch and came up empty. I ended November with many highlights, I ended the month with 108 species, I set a new big day record for my patch at 73 species, and I found two lifers with both of them having bunting as their names.

 

 

Exploring the Prescott area

Prescott is a very nice area to bird. It has lots of habitats and with many habitats come many birds! Prescott is located in northern Yavapai, a county that I only have 93 species in (as of now), so I made a few calls and wrote a few emails and after a few replies made a trip on October 23rd to the Prescott area with Mr. Joe Ford, Mr. Paul Doucett, Ms. Haylie Hewitt, and my brother David. We visited Watson Lake, Granite Basin Lake, and Willow Lake. I had two target birds and they were Wood Duck and Cassin's Finch, I have seen WODU's a few times but I can never get tired of that bird, and anyways I don't have WODU on my year list yet. When we parked the car I could see that there was some nice riparian habitat that went into the lake. Here are a couple photos of Watson Lake and the surrounding habitat.

 

We were only the 2nd car in the parking lot when we arrived, but that changed pretty quickly! There were bikers, hikers, and I even ran into Yavapai's eBird reviewer Steven Burk. While we were walking along the main trail I spied this mannequin taking a rest against a building!

Okay now that was a little strange, but it got even stranger when I heard a high pitched whistle that sounded like a hawk but was not loud enough, so I walked to where I heard it and found three Wood Ducks! Here is a photo of a female and male. One out of two booya!

Unfortunatly no one else was able see them, but they did hear them. Right after the WODU's took flight I could hear some fledgeling Pied-billed Grebes begging, so I started hiking towards them and was able to witness an adult PBGR feed a fish to one of its three fledgelings. At first the fish looked to big for the youngling to swallow, but after a few attempts he gulped that sucker down!

It just happened that there was a Neotropic Cormorant right above the grebes.

 I wonder what the cormorant thinks of the grebes???

There was a large variety of birds on and around Watson Lake, birds ranging from sparrows, warblers, and woodpeckers to ducks herons and grebes. Here are a few other birds we saw on the pleasant walk.
                                                                    Bewick's Wren

                                                                                Bushtit

 

 

Gadwall

 We ended Watson Lake with 50 species of bird and quite a few highlights in there as well. Our next stop was Granite Basin Lake, according to eBird this was going to be quite a birdy area and a birdy area it was! I even got a lifer. But you will have to wait to find out.

Once we arrived at the camping area where we ate our lunch I headed out to find some birds. It didn't take long for me to find a beautiful adult Townsend's Solitaire that flycatched right in front of my face, but of course I was not able to photograph the awesome moment, instead here is a distant photo!

After eating lunch we drove down to the lake where we spent quite a bit of time birding the riparian area.
                                                                   Granite Basin Lake

 While we birded the riparian area we had a good amount of species, one of the highlights was a flock of 5 Red-naped Sapsuckers in a single tree! We also had an Acorn Woodpeckers at its stash tree.

After observing the clown like woodpecker at his man-cave I spied my lifer Cassin's Finch on top of a very tall pine!                                    

Right when I saw the bird I snapped a couple of photos then I tried to point the bird out to everyone but failed, only a couple of people saw it but even then they didn't see anything different about the bird. I still wanted to get better looks at one, but I didn't think that was going to happen. As we birded the same trails around again I spied yet another female only this time everyone got great looks!

                                                                      Cassin's Finch!!!

From left to right: Mr. Paul Doucett, my brother David, Mr. Joe Ford, and Ms. Haylie Hewitt

The Cassin's Finch was a life bird for all of us exept for Mr. Ford who saw his only one in Colorado. After Granite Basin Lake we made our last stop of the day to Willow Lake. Once we arrived at the parking lot we spied a Merlin and a pair of Bald Eagles!

 You can barely see in the photos but the eagles are sporting some nice bling-bling on their legs!

I can never get tired of seeing BAEA's they are just so majestic! We then started hiking on the trail going down toward the lake when my brother spied a Greater Roadrunner that ran under a bush, so I walked over to the bush and got a killer face shot of this awesome ground-cuckoo!

While I was down under the bush trying to get a clear photo without sticks in the birds face I heard the distinctive flight call of the Lawrence's Goldfinch, but as I got out of the bush I could not see the bird. We then hiked a bit further to where we could start scoping out the lake. When we stopped I could hear the begging calls of a fledgeling Anna's Hummingbird and when I looked up I was greeted by this sight.

We were surprised to see a Cattle Egret (our first egret of the day) along the shore.

CAEG then flew on to a island and then GREG flew with CAEG and I got a photo of GREG taking CAEG's spot, and in all of that is a GBHE.

 I ended the day with 36 Yavapers (first for Yavapai) which brought my Yavapai list up to 129! Before I end this post here are a couple of photos of Willow Lake.

Thanks Mr. Ford, Mr. Paul, Ms. Haylie, and David for the awesome day of birding!