Neighbors, Exercise, Fresh Air and Birds

I promise I will go back to posting about the entire Tucson metro area soon, but just one more about my neighborhood. It's been so fun and rewarding to discover that people here in the Palo Verde Neighborhood care about birds. This morning we did a neighborhood bird walk. Eight neighbors and a colleague from Tucson Audubon walked around for over 2 1/2 hours watching birds and getting to know each other.

Neighborhood birders this morning

We were helped by having with us Ronni, neighborhood association president, and Vivian, long-time neighborhood birder. Ronni knows just about everything there is to know about the neighborhood and Vivian has seen about 80 different species in the neighborhood over the years.

I didn't take photos of birds this morning since I was carrying binoculars and a scope, and talking a lot. But I did get one of the group!

Our neighborhood is not a birding hotspot. There is no stream, lake, wash or natural open space. So why bird here? Because it is our neighborhood, our "patch," and there are birds all around us. Here's the key message: Since there is no natural habitat, all the birds are surviving on our residential landscaping. If you like seeing birds--as these eight people clearly did--then what can we do as a neighborhood to make the landscape support even more species?

We met at eight a.m. and right away we saw Gila woodpeckers, a great-tailed grackle, a European starling and an American kestrel. Moving northwest through the neighborhood we found curve-billed thrashers and then a pyrrhuloxia in a clump of mesquite and cholla where I had seen one before.

We found we were close to Rich's house, a member of the neighborhood association board of directors that had come along on the walk. He invited us in to his back yard to see what was at the feeders. We hoped for the Abert's towhees that he said sometimes visit the yard but they were nowhere to be found. However, there were lesser goldfinches, wintering white-crowned sparrows and a brilliant male broad-billed hummingbird.

On Rich's street we saw two unusual wintering white-winged doves and a singing male northern cardinal in all his bright red splendor and song. A block later we walked down what I call the "quail cul-de-sac" and saw four quail, another white-crowned sparrow and several other species like house finch and northern mockingbird that we saw in many places along the way.

The male American kestrel seemed to follow us around, appearing again and again along the way.

We got to the Catalina High School athletic fields and found the male vermilion flycatcher in pretty short order. Then it was off to Vivian's street where we watched birds at the feeders, include some more broad-billed hummingbirds, and saw some great front yards with native vegetation.

Here are the species we saw this morning:

1.  Gambel's Quail (Callipepla gambelii) 

2.  Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) 

3.  Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) (Columba livia (Domestic type)) 

4.  White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica) 

5.  Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 

6.  Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna) 

7.  Broad-billed Hummingbird (Cynanthus latirostris) 

8.  Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis) 

9.  American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) 

10.Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) 

11.Common Raven (Corvus corax) 

12.Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps) 

13.Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre) 

14.Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) 

15.European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) 

16.White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) 

17.Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) 

18.Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus) 

19.Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) 

20.House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) 

21.Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria) 

22.House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)