Mike in the Wild

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Birdwatching in Mazatlán's Parque Central

Ever since my last visit to Mazatlán a year ago, my thoughts were on a tufted jay, an endemic bird found in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Sinaloa and two neighboring Mexican states. During that trip, the tour guide taking my ship's group to the mountains even saw one from our bus as we took a busy highway out of the bustling port city. I never witnessed the bird myself, even when we stopped at several towns in rural communities like Concordia and Copala. On my return to Mazatlán this month, I sought out the assistance of a birding guide to take me around the area in pursuit of the tufted jay and other endemic birds. Unfortunately no one was available to escort me on the single day that my ship was in port. However the tour company Birdwatching Mazatlán did offer me advice on where to go birding in the city. As a result, for only a ten-dollar taxi ride, I found myself in the city's Parque Central, an extensive expanse of landscaped parkland withi...

Band-tailed Pigeons, Finally

Four years ago I wrote about my determination to find a band-tailed pigeon in the wild, and until very recently I was still, sadly, failing in that endeavor. But then this month my luck suddenly changed when I had two, or possibly even three, encounters. And they demanded hardly any effort at all, just casual observations from the comfort of my Prescott home's deck. In very early September, just beyond my front yard, I noticed a flock of doves take off together from a tall ponderosa pine and quickly fly away. The birds appeared much larger than mourning doves, and I could see that their outspread tail feathers were broader than the pointy ones of doves. But I wasn't sure about the namesake dark band stretching across their tails, which is why it always helps to catch a photograph of my subjects. I was luckier in my next encounter a few days later when I witnessed an especially large dove perched high in a pine tree in my front yard. The bird gav...

A First Lewis's Woodpecker in Prescott

I reliably see four different species of woodpeckers throughout the long summers I spend in Prescott. In fact, every day I bear witness to the northern flickers, acorns, hairys, and ladderbacks that visit my yard's suet feeders. The only other one I've seen on my property has been a red-naped, and that was during autumn several years ago, as the woodpecker foraged high in a ponderosa pine. But then yesterday, on my only visit to Granite Basin Lake all summer, I encountered an entirely new species, the Lewis's. The only other time I've seen a Lewis's woodpecker was just over a year ago, along the Animas River in Durango, Colorado. I was struck by it's unique coloration, not exhibiting mostly black and white like almost all of its local kin but showing a unique greenish backside and a torso splashed with winey red. And true to its reputation, the bird was acting more like a flycatcher as it made forays from a lamppost in its hunt for insects. At Granite...

A White-headed Pygmy Nuthatch

I soon started calling the white-headed bird visiting my Prescott feeders Uncle Fester. Like the well-known member of the Addams family, the bird appeared bald, and the black stripes on both sides of its face made the bird's eyes look dark and sunken. In my years of birdwatching, I had never seen anything like it. After I realized it wasn't an exotic new species, I began to think it was a white-breasted nuthatch with a color variation. Maybe the bird was missing its head's black patch that sometimes appears like a thin black stripe stretching between its eyes from beak to nape. Then I thought it might be a red-breasted nuthatch, a bird that only rarely visits my yard. But I soon recognized the bird as a pygmy nuthatch without its normally gray head feathers. As I studied the photographs I took, I also discovered it lacked any buff hue in its sides and belly. Uncle Fester was leucistic, having a genetic condition where an animal has an abse...

A Bear at My Prescott Home

I awoke to the sound of breaking glass coming from outside my bedroom window. Even though it was 12:30 AM, I grabbed a flashlight and headed outside in the direction of the noise, towards my neighbors' house. I knew they were out of town, and I would have wanted them to similarly keep an eye on my place while I traveled. When I reached the end of my driveway, I could see a pair of bright eyes across the street reflecting the beam of my flashlight. On a slope below where my neighbors kept their trash bins, a bear was staring directly at me. And then it turned, climbed up the slope, and sauntered away down the street. Just a few weeks later, I would have an entirely different bear story that occurred very much closer - not a hundred feet away but a mere six feet from my front door. My summer had begun several weeks earlier with lots of bear sightings in my Prescott neighborhood. There were stories of a big one that kept get...

Prescott's Four Hummingbirds

The first of July is Rufous Hummingbird Day at my cabin in Prescott. Like most years, that was the day this summer when I saw the first one of the season perching in the alligator juniper tree adjacent to my deck. By the end of the week, that or some other male rufous had unsurprisingly supplanted a male Anna's as the new owner of my yard's hummingbird feeder. Anna's hummingbirds can reside year-round in Prescott, many surviving winter's sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms. To help them out during the arrival of the dominant rufouses, I installed a second sugar water feeder in my yard as soon I discovered the migrants. Alas within a few days, another male rufous took control of that supply of nectar also. Any Anna's imbibed only by daring occasional, furtive sips. Before the arrival of the rufous, I began spotting an occasional black-chinned hummingbird at the feeder. This bird is a summer visitor to the higher elevations of A...