Documenting Birds in my Neighborhod

Part of my year of urban birding is to document what can be seen in my neighborhood. The Palo Verde Neighborhood is a square mile in what we call "midtown" Tucson. There is nothing special about it in terms of natural resources--no open spaces except a few vacant lots and sports fields at the high school. There's certainly no "natural open space" with real native habitat.

Booboo, my neighborhood birding buddy
(in a younger day before he needed
to lose a pound or two!)

People think of neighborhoods such as this as consisting of homes, pavement and ornamental plantings. But it is bird habitat too. Several species spend at least part of the year here. The question is, "How good is this habitat and what birds can be found?"

So after walking the dogs this afternoon with my wife Mary Beth I went back out with Booboo, the younger dog. He's gotten a little pudgy lately and needs the additional exercise. (Audrey the older dog was tuckered out.) I took a camera in case I found any birds to document.

I headed northeast and cut through a paved stormwater conduit that connects between two residential streets. For me it was just a shortcut to a street where I often see quail. But as soon as I entered I saw a curve-billed thrasher, and then a second. One perched very obligingly on a cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) for this photo. What a great neighborhood bird!

Curve-billed Thrasher

Tucson neighborhoods are pretty good at hosting this species. Thrashers are not picky eaters, with a diet of insects, seeds and fruits. They find food by probing around in leaf litter or soil with their curved bill. Here and there in Tucson residential areas they find spiny cacti like chollas or other dense, spiny brush in which to build their nests. If you have such vegetation you have a chance to see their large nests and pretty blue eggs.

Perhaps I had found a neighborhood bird hotspot because several other species appeared in short order. A pair of Abert's towhees next moved through the vegetation along the sides of the shortcut. 

Abert's towhee

There aren't a lot of these in the neighborhood and I'm very interested in where they nest. They are considered a more specialized species keeping mostly to streams and larger washes (riparian areas) and sometimes dense upland brush. There is no such habitat here and it is only fairly recently that we have realized they are sometimes found in neighborhoods such as this. If we can figure out how this species is making it in our neighborhood, we can perhaps do a better job of supporting an urban population of this declining species. 

The wintering white-winged dove appeared again, on a wire running through the alley that bisects the drainage area. Only a few of these stay around in winter. I include a nearby mourning dove, common in winter, for comparison.

White-winged dove

Mourning dove

Heading out of the drainage way I made my way to where I hoped to see quail. They appeared right no schedule. I got a few photos and this one, of a male, was the best. 

Gambel's quail

Gambel's quail is found here and there in midtown neighborhoods, but is not particularly common. A graduate student at the University of Arizona figured out that quail would likely be reestablished in midtown if just 10-15% of the ground surface was landscaped with native Sonoran Desert vegetation. That's attainable. There's one small patch of suitable landscaping on the street I visited and it is certainly working there. 

Similar vegetation, including native trees and large shrubs, provides niches for northern cardinal as well. 

Northern cardinal

I saw several other species as well, including red-tailed hawk, lesser goldfinch, northern mockingbird, house finch and verdin. If we think about what birds we have now, any why, we might go on to think about we can support other species that have declined in our area. 

Here's a list of the 22 species I've seen in the neighborhood so far in 2014. 

Gambel's Quail (Callipepla gambelii)

Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

Rock pigeon (Columba livia)

Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)

White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica)

Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)

Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)

Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna)

Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis)

American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)

Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus)

Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps)

Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre)

Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)

European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata)

Abert's Towhee (Melozone aberti)

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)

Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria)

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)