My Neighborhood, My Patch

In this year of birding and blogging in the greater Tucson area I will document what I see in my neighborhood as well as what I see Tucson-wide. My emerging philosophy is to bird more near home and less farther from home. This keeps down my carbon footprint and motivates me to bird more often because of the multitude of birding possibilities within a 20-mile radius or so from home. Every time I step out into my back yard or walk the dogs, I'm birding.

My neighborhood is eminently convenient as a birding site. For one thing, it is all around me all the time. It is called the Palo Verde Neighborhood and it is a mile square of single-family homes, apartments and businesses in "midtown" Tucson. It has no special birding resources--no stream, no wash, no forest--only the trees and shrubs people have planted over the years. If I can communicate to neighbors what I find, I think they will be surprised at the number and diversity of birds around them. When they learn of this diversity, I hope they consider landscaping and gardening in ways that support even more birds.

We have an active neighborhood association (sponsoring events, neighborhood watches and promoting communication among residents) and very, very interesting residents. When I meet new people, they are often more knowledgeable about birds than I expected.

Booboo (pug) and Audrey (Boston terrier),
my neighborhood birding buddies

Walking our two dogs is a good excuse to see what new birds might turn up. Today was the first day I tried walking two dogs with binoculars and a camera. It can be a bit tricky. They pull on the leash while you are trying to take a photo. Bending down with a bag to pick up dog poop demands extra care with the optics.

I'm sure my accouterments looked odd to some neighbors. In part this is an experiment to see how long I can walk around the neighborhood with binoculars and camera without somebody calling the police. I hope the dogs will be my ambassadors of good will.

Gila woodpecker working on a
opening pecan shell

So far everyone I've met have been welcoming. On January 5 I was walking the dogs and saw a white-winged dove. That's a bit of a rarity in January given that most of our population of this species migrates south. I had no camera and continued down the street. I had seen a white-winged dove the previous winter in an adjacent alley and I decided to take that alley on my way back home. I lingered behind a house with a huge pecan tree. Lesser goldfinches were perched in the tree and Gila woodpeckers were taking pecans and hammering them open at the top of a telephone pole.

A man emerged from a neighboring house to check me out. I glanced down at the dogs hoping they would be their normal, disarming selves. I guessed he came out to see if something untoward was going on. Neighbors consider themselves to be especially vulnerable to criminals working the alleys looking for valuables in cars and looking over back walls. But we quickly got into a conversation about birds and he said his name was Rich. He pointed out the bird feeders just visible over the wall of his back yard. He said Cooper's hawks had been around trying to catch his feeder birds. That was good news to me because I hadn't seen our neighborhood's pair for a while and wondered what they had gotten up to. Just then he motioned me over and pointed to an adult Cooper's, just feet away in a tree. A potentially awkward encounter was now a shared bird experience. I explained that I worked for Tucson Audubon and that I am trying to document all the birds in the neighborhood. He was very supportive. I later learned Rich had recently joined the board of directors of the neighborhood association, so I hope that bodes well for neighborhood birds!

White-winged dove, January 12, 2014

On Sunday I managed to refind the white-winged dove and took this photo. To get the shot I had to point the zoom lens upward over a wall around somebody house. It could have looked like I was spying, though the wall prevented me from seeing anything but the tree. I felt a bit self conscious anyway. As I was taking the shot, a man--also walking his dog--came by and asked if there was something unusual. I explained about the white-winged dove. Like Rich, he began to enthuse about neighborhood birds saying he'd noticed that hummingbirds stay all winter now when the didn't used to. Again I explained my job and my mission to document neighborhood birds. It was warmly received. Two for two! I'm sure it was the dogs.

Birds seen in the Palo Verde Neighborhood as of January 13
Gambel's Quail (Callipepla gambelii)
Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)
Rock Pigeon (Columba livia)
White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica)
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna)
Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis)
Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps)
Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre)
Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata)
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)
Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria)
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)