What's in Your Neighborhood? The Garden District Tries to Answer that Question

The Garden District, the next neighborhood east of mine, got wind of my effort to promote urban birds and birding. They asked me to do a bird walk. I agreed and Meg and Kris, from the neighborhood association, arranged for me to lead a walk yesterday (Saturday) morning at 7 a.m.

Let me know if this is something you would like to do in your neighborhood!

I went over about 6:45 a.m. and met about 10 residents. Our hostess, Lisa, set out a great spread of coffee cake, orange juice and strawberries. Lisa's partner Michael, a biologist, was quite knowledgeable about neighborhood birds--I could tell right away he'd be an asset as we walked around the neighborhood.

A big thank you to the Kris Yarter of the Garden District for supplying the next two photos.

Gathering at Lisa's house before the walk (Kris Yarter)

The group stops to watch white-winged doves and Gila woodpeckers (Kris Yarter)

We set out through the neighborhood seeing plenty of house finches, house sparrows, mourning doves, white-winged doves and lesser goldfinches. When we arrived at a large, corner lot with a lot of native vegetation, the first thing we spotted was not a bird but a swarm of bees that had spent the night in a blue palo verde along the street. We gave it a wide berth and learned later that it had moved on later in the day.

Honey bee swarm in a palo verde

Other finds were made here including an early-blooming saguaro that was attracting birds and bees.

Curve-billed thrasher among saguaro flowers, and a bee

Saguaros provide food and nesting opportunities to birds. It's not always the woodpecker holes that provide a place to nest. This rotten section of a saguaro arm made the perfect nesting spot for this dove.

Dove on a nest in a saguaro arm

I've also heard of Lucy's warblers nesting in tiny rot-holes and of course some large raptors like Harris's hawks and caracaras have been known to build their nests in saguaros.

Later we saw vermilion flycatchers in two different places. Both times we saw evidence of family life. I knew about one at the elementary school yard and on this occasion we found both the adult male (pictured below--an earlier photo of the same male) and an immature individual, apparently a fledged young-of-the-year. Also, in a back yard along an alley we found a male feeding a female that was sitting on a nest!

Here's a photo of the male vermilion flycatcher at the school yard I took a while back.

Vermilion flycatcher on the elementary school fence, Garden District

In the same alley from which we saw the flycatcher nest we heard incessant singing of a Lucy's warbler. It turned out there was a pair of them acting as if on a nesting territory. I want to go back and track down whether there is a nest in that area. I thought it was rare for them to nest in residential areas, so I want to follow up. In the same alley--let's call it the "magic alley" since we saw so much there--we saw an Abert's towhee fly up to a fence, sit for a minute, and then disappear out of sight.

Back at Lisa's house after the walk, an Abert's towhee showed up at her seed feeder. Michael said that although they've come in the past, it had been some weeks since the last sighting. Today Lisa emailed that they are still coming to the feeder, and that she was attributing that to my influence! Perhaps I can take credit for heightening their vigilance in observing the feeder. In any case it was a successful morning of meeting new neighborhood birders and enjoying nature in a residential setting.

Here is the complete list of species seen during the walk:

Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) (Columba livia (Domestic type))
White-winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica)
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
Black-chinned Hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri)
Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna)
Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis)
Empidonax sp. (Empidonax sp.)--probably a migrating cordilleran or pacific-slope flycatcher
Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus)
Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps)
Cactus Wren (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus)
Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre)
Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)
European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
Lucy's Warbler (Oreothlypis luciae)
Abert's Towhee (Melozone aberti)
Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus)
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)
Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria)
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)