Don't Have Wilderness? Get a Patch!

Research by Charles Van Riper suggests that migrating birds make a series of decisions when they stop to rest and refuel. In the end they find a patch of vegetation that suits their needs. Sometimes they stay in a very small area for a day or more. This means we can provide a stopover area for some migratory species with a patch of vegetation as small as our back yard or neighborhood lot.

A curve-billed thrasher in a good thrasher patch
in my Tucson neighborhood 

This explains why, every spring, I see or hear birds in my neighborhood that don't winter or nest here: Lucy's warbler, Wilson's warbler, plumbeous vireo, etc. There are a few patches of vegetation, at least, that serve their needs during brief stopovers.

Some birds probably need a bigger patch, or a different kind of patch. One of my favorite things to do in late April or so is to find a mulberry tree with a lot of fruit in it. I haven't found one yet in my neighborhood, but maybe it's out there. The fruit attracts migrating orioles, grosbeaks and tanagers--and sometimes a flock of wintering cedar waxwings that haven't quite left yet. It can be very colorful!

Gila woodpecker at a feeder at
Tucson Audubon's Mason Center

No spring migrants yet around here. Resident and wintering birds are making a living on our patches--like the curve-billed thrasher above. Thorny trees and cacti make a great patch for them.

Putting out a bird feeder essentially makes a "patch." That's why we put feeders out, to create a place a bird can visit where we can see them. The Gila woodpecker at left started spending a lot more time in the bush outside my office after I put up a feeder.

Feeder patches offer only one thing--food. A bird also needs cover (places to hide from predators or the sun), places to nest and sometimes water (though some birds get the moisture they need from what they eat). That's why landscaping designed for birds--providing not only food but cover and nesting opportunities--can really increase the number and diversity of birds we see in the urban area. Native vegetation works better than feeders!

As spring comes this year I'll be looking around my neighborhood for patches that meet the stopover needs of migratory birds. I'll be thinking about how to make them better, to serve more varieties of migrating birds. At the same time I'll be looking at which of our regions nesting birds build their nests here. And I'll be thinking about what other species might nest here if we had more and better patches.

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)

Flickers, Nest Boxes and What's Singing Today!

The big news for The Verdin News today is that I heard a verdin singing this morning. The weather is spring-like here, and has been for weeks, so a spring song seems appropriate.

To be truthful, I've heard verdins sing a couple of other times this winter. They seem to play their song occasionally even in regular winter weather. But with our daily high temperatures reaching the high 60s to 70s F for at least the last three weeks, it just seemed right to hear the verdin. The song is a couple or a few notes, sometimes all on the same pitch and sometimes with the first note higher and the rest about a major third lower. Listen to the sounds a verdin makes (the one I heard is described here as the "spring mating song").

Gilded flicker, female

I was at Tucson Audubon's Mason Center this morning with a group of volunteers helping us to make experimental nest boxes. I was able to get some photos of a pair of gilded flickers that came in to the snag behind the office where we have a feeder.

The flicker visit seemed appropriate since they make nest holes and, well, we were making nest holes too. Gilded flickers are one of the two species (along with Gila woodpeckers) that make holes in our tall, columnar saguaro cacti. Many other birds end up nesting in the cavities they excavate.

Gilded flicker, male

But gilded flickers retreat from even fairly low-density development. Plus, there aren't as many saguaros in developed areas, so nest holes are at premium in the city. Add to this the fact that we formerly had some lowland forest associated with streams that have disappeared due to ground water pumping, cutting firewood or erosion. Those trees also often had holes made by Gila woodpeckers or ladder-backed woodpeckers.

Some species have hole-nesting birds have dwindled, perhaps simply for a lack of holes. We're trying to see if increasing the number of holes helps. If we figure out how to be successful, maybe we can start a successful public campaign like those for bluebird boxes in the eastern and mid-western United States.

Keith and Bill make an American kestrel box

Our experimental nest box pilot program will put out approximately 60 boxes and gourds to see what will nest in them. The conventional wisdom around here has been that nest boxes don't work--they get too hot. But we have heard anecdotal stories of success with boxes. We want to see if we can come up with the right nest box design and the right placement of the box so that they can be successful for some hole-nesting species. This spring we have two box sizes, one for American kestrels (that might also be used for western screech-owls) and one for ash-throated flycatchers (which also may be used by brown-crested flycatchers).

We've also heard about successes with gourds as nest sites for Lucy's warbler, one of only two hold-nesting North American wood warblers.

This is all part of Tucson Audubon's Urban Program, raising awareness of birds in the urban area, reducing threats to bird and improving habitat.

It's been a challenge to get these boxes made. But we have many volunteers eager to host the boxes and monitor them to see if some of our native birds use them. It will be exciting this spring to see what happens!

What I've Seen So Far

Winter in Tucson is kind of magical for birders. Birds show up that would not have a chance at surviving year-round, or reproducing, here. But many parks and other nooks and crannies of habitat have enough resources for them in winter. It's warm enough that there is some insect life through the winter, and pockets of habitat have seeds and fruits left over from summer and fall.

The part of Himmel Park hosting the Harris's sparrow

At the beginning I said I wasn't necessarily out to chase rarities during this year of birding in Tucson. I would write about what an average birder could see in a year in Tucson. But I have seen some unusual birds.

For example, I wrote about some Cassin's kingbirds in another post. And on the very first day of the year I went to Himmel Park to look for a Harris's sparrow. It was first seen December 29 by Scott Olmstead--his photos of it can be seen with his eBird checklist. I found it in relatively short order. Harris's sparrow is a casual transient and winter visitor here.

Scott found this bird, he later told me, because he wanted to be out birding a lot. But his job didn't allow him to go on a lot of long trips. He was finding that he was seeing marvelous diversity of birds in locales within the urban area. He said Rio Vista Natural Resource Park was one of them. Indeed, according to eBird 25 species have been seen there so far in 2014--in just three weeks. Many of these species at Rio Vista were seen by Scott. They include a peregrine falcon and a somewhat rare winter broad-billed hummingbird. Some broad-billed hummingbird spend the winter in the vicinity of hummingbird feeders.

It was on a morning Scott had decided to try another spot--the relatively habitat-poor Himmel Park--that he found the Harris's sparrow. It would feed on the ground, sometimes with a white-crowned sparrow and sometimes with house sparrows, and then retreat into an oleander hedge (seen in the photo above).

Broad-billed hummingbird, Tucson Audubon front yard
January 24, 2014

I too saw a broad-billed hummingbird this winter. It has been hanging out in the front yard of the Tucson Audubon Society Offices and Nature Shop. There are feeders!

I have also seen a Lewis's woodpecker that was found in December in Reid Park. The are rare here in winter. And I have seen the black-and-white warbler that was found at Sweetwater Wetlands.

So far I have seen 70 species of birds in the greater Tucson area, and 21 species in my neighborhood.

By the way, you can see the Tucson locations I write about by going to eBird.org, clicking on "Explore Data" and using the "Hotspot Explorer." Put the name of the birding location in the box and hit enter! I will try always to use the name of the location that is used in eBird.

1    Gadwall - Anas strepera

2    American Wigeon - Anas americana

3    Mallard - Anas platyrhynchos

4    Cinnamon Teal - Anas cyanoptera

5    Northern Shoveler - Anas clypeata

6    Northern Pintail - Anas acuta

7    Green-winged Teal - Anas crecca

8    Canvasback - Aythya valisineria

9    Ring-necked Duck - Aythya collaris

10  Common Merganser - Mergus merganser

11  Ruddy Duck - Oxyura jamaicensis

12  Gambel's Quail - Callipepla gambelii

13  Pied-billed Grebe - Podilymbus podiceps

14  Neotropic Cormorant - Phalacrocorax brasilianus

15  Great Egret - Ardea alba

16  Black-crowned Night-Heron - Nycticorax nycticorax

17  Northern Harrier - Circus cyaneus

18  Cooper's Hawk - Accipiter cooperii

19  Red-tailed Hawk - Buteo jamaicensis

20  American Coot - Fulica americana

21  Black-necked Stilt - Himantopus mexicanus

22  Spotted Sandpiper - Actitis macularius

23  Rock Pigeon - Columba livia

24  Eurasian Collared-Dove - Streptopelia decaocto

25  White-winged Dove - Zenaida asiatica

26  Mourning Dove - Zenaida macroura

27  Greater Roadrunner - Geococcyx californianus

28  Great Horned Owl - Bubo virginianus

29  Anna's Hummingbird - Calypte anna

30  Costa's Hummingbird - Calypte costae

31  Broad-billed Hummingbird - Cynanthus latirostris

32  Belted Kingfisher - Megaceryle alcyon

33  Lewis's Woodpecker - Melanerpes lewis

34  Gila Woodpecker - Melanerpes uropygialis

35  Ladder-backed Woodpecker - Picoides scalaris

36  Northern Flicker - Colaptes auratus

37  American Kestrel - Falco sparverius

38  Prairie Falcon - Falco mexicanus

39  Black Phoebe - Sayornis nigricans

40  Say's Phoebe - Sayornis saya

41  Vermilion Flycatcher - Pyrocephalus rubinus

42  Cassin's Kingbird - Tyrannus vociferans

43  Plumbeous Vireo - Vireo plumbeus

44  Common Raven - Corvus corax

45  Verdin - Auriparus flaviceps

46  Rock Wren - Salpinctes obsoletus

47  Marsh Wren - Cistothorus palustris

48  Cactus Wren - Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus

49  Black-tailed Gnatcatcher - Polioptila melanura

50  Ruby-crowned Kinglet - Regulus calendula

51  Western Bluebird - Sialia mexicana

52  Curve-billed Thrasher - Toxostoma curvirostre

53  Northern Mockingbird - Mimus polyglottos

54  European Starling - Sturnus vulgaris

55  Phainopepla - Phainopepla nitens

56  Black-and-white Warbler - Mniotilta varia

57  Orange-crowned Warbler - Oreothlypis celata

58  Yellow-rumped Warbler - Setophaga coronata

59  Wilson's Warbler - Cardellina pusilla

60  Abert's Towhee - Melozone aberti

61  Chipping Sparrow - Spizella passerina

62  Lincoln's Sparrow - Melospiza lincolnii

63  Harris's Sparrow - Zonotrichia querula

64  White-crowned Sparrow - Zonotrichia leucophrys

65  Northern Cardinal - Cardinalis cardinalis

66  Western Meadowlark - Sturnella neglecta

67  Great-tailed Grackle - Quiscalus mexicanus

68  House Finch - Haemorhous mexicanus

69  Lesser Goldfinch - Spinus psaltria

70  House Sparrow - Passer domesticus

Palo Verde Neighborhood--New 2014 Birds Today

My mission to document neighborhood birds got a nice jolt this morning when I saw two species I had not seen yet this year. I reveal them below.

Vermilion flycatcher, Catalina High School

I had taken to the streets first by bicycle and then walking the dogs. While walking the dogs my camera and binoculars again drew attention. I man named Pete, also walking two small dogs, asked what I was seeing. I described some of the morning's finds. He seemed to accept that I was okay. Not one person has yet failed to believe my story that I'm documenting birds in the neighborhood (and not casing the area for homes that I could burglarize!). Again, the cuteness and friendliness of the dogs was working in my favor. And it probably helped that I could name some birds that I had seen.

Before all that I started with a ride over to the high school athletic field where, not unpredictably, I found the male vermilion flycatcher that I saw yesterday and reported in my last post. In the morning sun its red crown and underside was brilliant. Really they are almost always brilliant; probably the brightest natural color in our part of the world.

I also saw white-winged dove again today. I don't know if this was the same individual I saw before several blocks away or another. I know there is at least one in the neighborhood this winter. A Cooper's hawk perched alertly above one of the properties where I see a lot of birds--one of the two places in the neighborhood I regularly see quail. Eventually I'll get a photo of one of the quail. The hawk didn't try to catch anything while I was around.

American kestrel

Along the way I also saw the second American kestrel of the year in the Palo Verde Neighborhood. This bodes well for the experimental nest box program Tucson Audubon is running this spring. We will get boxes out for kestrels and some other birds to see if they will nest in them. The conventional wisdom is that boxes get too hot here for successful nesting. However, we have heard about enough successes with boxes that we are bucking the trend and giving it a try. If we can determine how to make them work here (choosing the right box design, putting them in the shade, insulating them) we can start a nest box promotion program that might interest many new Tucsonans in conservation and the Audubon movement.

Abert's towhee

Somewhat ironically, it was not until I got back home that I saw today's two new birds for the neighborhood. I had sat down in the back yard to enter sightings in eBird when two birds landed on the wall of the back yard--both Abert's towhees. This is is known as a bird of riparian forests and thickets. It is not found in great numbers in our region but it is found very reliably along remaining streams and along healthy washes. It does, however, turn up in Tucson neighborhoods--perhaps especially the older ones with more mature vegetation. I'd like to find out what it is they need to survive and reproduce in our neighborhood. Perhaps we can replicate that in other neighborhoods.

Eurasian collared-dove

The last new bird of the day alerted me to its presence with low, whistled too-TOOOO-to, too-TOOOO-to. Up on the telephone pole in the alley was a Eurasian collared-dove. Relatively new to Tucson, this species has been moving across the country from Florida where it first appeared in 1982. Read about its rapid colonization of North America here.

That's all the neighborhood bird news for today!

Tucson birds are really cool! I've added a couple species to the neighborhood list since the last post: Gambel's quail and vermilion flycatcher. There are a couple of homes in the neighborhood that have quail-friendly landscapes (plenty of cover--places on the ground to hide and nest under vegetation). When I eventually do a birding field trip around they neighborhood, they will be places I'll stop!

Gambel's quail is a charismatic bird. Our city would be blessed to have more of them. A study at the University of Arizona found that only 10-15% of the ground surface needs to have the right kind of native shrub cover in order to support quail.

The vermilion flycatcher was at the athletic fields at Catalina High School. In Tucson almost every grassy park or school ground has at least one pair of these brilliant birds. I'll try to get a photo of our local one, along with the quail!.

Unfortunately not everybody in Tucson knows how cool the birds are. That's why I was really happy to assist Tucson Audubon field trip leader Brian Nicholas on Saturday on a trip for beginners. He had the brilliant idea of doing an afternoon field trip, figuring that some people may be nature enthusiasts--and perhaps nascent birders--even though they don't want to get up early in the morning.

Red-tailed hawk

Brian was right. Twenty-four people signed up for the trip, so many that he asked me to help out as a co-leader. There were children and young adults as well, which we don't get a lot of on our morning trips. This excursion was on Tucson's east side, more or less along Tanque Verde Wash. This is a broad, dry sandy wash that only holds water occasionally. However, groundwater--although being depleted--is still high enough to support some dense riparian vegetation along the sides of the wash.

At the place where Tanque Verde Loop Road crosses the was we birded along the road and up the wash a short distance. Beginners got stunning views of a red-tailed hawk. Northern cardinal, northern (red-shafted) flicker, phainopepla, Abert's towhee and many other resident and wintering species showed off for us. Somewhat rare were several wintering white-winged doves, a few western bluebirds and a plumbeous vireo. The vireo nests in our local mountains but most go much farther south for the winter. Occasionally one is seen in the local lowlands in the winter.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker

We continued into the gated community where Brian lives, The Lakes at Castle Rock. There we visited two ponds, a smaller pond he calls the "Cattail Pond" and a larger on at the community's recreation center. At the Cattail Pond participants got pretty close views of two great horned owls in a eucalyptus tree. The very next eucalyptus tree had thousands of sapsucker holes in it, and one sapsucker. It turned out to be a yellow-bellied sapsucker, much rarer here than the usual red-naped sapsuckers we get in the winter.

At the larger lake beginners got a good luck at many ducks, northern shovelers, ruddy ducks, northern shovelers and a gadwall. A couple of pied-billed grebes were in the lake and a great egret patrolled the edges. A Say's phoebe also showed off nearby on the top of the recreation building.

Say's phoebe

After a loop through a brushy field Brian doubled back to the pond hoping that a flock of common mergansers that were there the night before would have come back. We had to settle for one that flew over several times but was not prepared to land. But it was nice ending to an encouraging day. Some enthusiastic beginners got a taste of wild birds.

As the sun disappeared the temperature dropped and people were ready to leave. I took one last photo of Brian and the group. You can tell Brian was having fun.

Brian Nicholas, right center

A Field Trip and New Friends (Bird and Human)

On January 11 I led a Tucson Audubon field trip at Atturbury Wash, in Lincoln Regional Park on Tucson's east side. We saw these 24 species. If "anything can appear anywhere, at any time," the "anything" that appeared this time was Cassin's kingbird. Two of them were among the first birds seen, just after they were heard calling"chi-bew" loudly from a mesquite tree (Prosopis velutina). They flew over us and into a netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata) along the wash, where we saw them from a distance of only about 15 yards.

Cassin's kingbird, by Paul Richards

Cassin's kingbird is "casual" in Tucson in autumn through January, meaning that it does not occur annually (at this time of year) and one should not expect to see it (Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona). However, eBird shows that in the last 30 days Cassin's kingbird has been seen in seven other locations around the Tucson metro area (three are fairly close together and might be the same birds).

In the last 30 days in the greater Southwest U.S. Cassin's has mainly been seen in metro Tucson and in coastal Southern California (with single outliers in Las Vegas and the central California coast). Is that where the birds are or is that where the birders are? There are a lot of holes in the data in the spaces between big cities--places where no eBird records have been submitted in the last 30 days. So it might be that they are out there. On the other hand, Phoenix is just 110 miles northwest of Tucson and there have been no sightings there.

Another nice find was at least three western bluebirds, which are common winter residents in our region but irregular in the Tucson basin. The best find was a person, Laurie, that wants to participate more in Tucson Audubon projects like our upcoming nest box pilot program. And Paul Richards who sent me several photos he said I could use, including the verdin in my inaugural post and the Cassin's kindbird seen here! Thanks Paul.

Atturbury Wash is a work site for Tucson Audubon's habitat restoration crew and volunteers, under a large grant from the Arizona Water Protection Fund and a smaller grant from Conserve to Enhance. We would not have seen these birds in this place if the Groves-Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association hadn't fought tooth and nail to keep this public land free of development and to encourage Tucson Parks and Rec to maintain access to natural open space. Tucson Audubon carries on this work advocating for birds and their habitat in places like this. Urban birds don't happen by accident.

Today on my way into an 8 a.m. meeting I heard, then saw, a Costa's hummingbird making its odd, zinging whistle while doing its looping courtship display. Generally this is directed at a female but I didn't find one, and the meeting was starting. This was in a new desert landscape at the grandly named Water and Energy Sustainability Center--the new Pima County labs and offices associated with the Agua Nueva Wastewater Reclamation Facility.

After a few relatively brief outings so far this year I am closing January 16 at 60 species in the Tucson area, based on 16 checklists submitted to eBird , and 15 species in my own neighborhood. I'm feeling a little bit like I might not be the right person to be writing this blog. Twenty-seven people have uploaded more checklists than I have and one has seen 90 more species than I.

But I did say that part of my quest finding out how many species the "average" birder could see around Tucson in a year. So I'm doing alright. And I did enjoy that little Costs's streaking around making its absurd sound.

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)

Welcome to The Verdin News

Verdin, courtesy Paul Richards

Kendall Kroesen
Urban Birder, Tucson Arizona

This is the first installment of The Verdin News. It documents a year, perhaps longer, of birding in Tucson, Arizona. The name comes from the ubiquitous and delightful verdins that inhabit Tucson gardens.

I hope those from outside Tucson will enjoy learning what it is like to bird here and that Tucsonans unfamiliar with our wildlife will amazed at what can be seen.

Part of my quest is to see a lot of bird species in 2014, but this is not a "big year" so much as an experiment in communicating what it's like to watch birds in Tucson. Birding here is graced by high bird diversity, wonderful birders and the fun of birding in new corners of our sprawling metro area. I want to communicate that.

However, I am curious how many species the average birder can see in and near Tucson in a single year. I think of myself as an advanced intermediate birder, and I think that it will be possible for "the average birder" to see what I see in a year. Since I won't chase every rarity, some may see more. I chase the feeling I get when birding.

This blog as adjunct to my job as Urban Program Manager at Tucson Audubon Society. In that job I promote awareness of wild birds, improve bird habitat, restore urban streams and mitigate threats to birds. I will use this blog to promote awareness of birds but I will do it on my own time. I sometimes post on the Tucson Audubon Blog as well.

I do not have a good camera but I will try to document at least some sightings by borrowing cameras from my workplace, digiscoping and mooching photos from others. Paul Richards, whom I met yesterday on an Audubon field trip, kindly provided the photo in this post. I enjoy how strangers can quickly become friends and collaborators.

I am inspired in this endeavor by other bird-related blogs, generous fellow birders in Tucson and people like David Lindo, The Urban Birder. Lindo says "Anything can appear anywhere at any time" (www.theurbanbirder.com). That is one of the charms of birding. You cannot exactly predict what you will see. The only thing for sure is that if you don't look, you won't see anything.

Birding is when I most often experience mindfulness. Akin to meditation, I think of mindfulness is a state in which I am thinking of nothing but am open to anything. Since anything can appear anywhere at any time, that is a good match.

Join me to experience the birds, and birders, of Tucson. I am starting today, January 12, 2014, but in subsequent posts I will document experiences earlier in the year until I catch up.