Mike in the Wild

A trip to Hawaii is a joy to the senses.  The sights, sounds and smells are some of the most beautiful and exotic in the world.  The rugged and verdant landscapes, nurtured by gentle, tropical trade winds and rains, have been home to native Hawaiian people for over fifteen hundred years.  But it didn't take long for these early Polynesian settlers to begin altering the ancient Eden they discovered.  In fact, they may have been responsible for the extinction of more than half of the island chain's native birds, especially the flightless varieties.  Starting with the arrival of  Captain Cook and the first Europeans in the 1700's, many new animals and practices were introduced that led to the rapid demise of even more of the original wildlife. As a result, visiting Hawaii's beautiful beaches and coastlines doesn't guarantee an encounter with pristine native fauna that a trip to Costa Rica or the Canadian woodlands might.   Most surviving endemic birds have been pushe

A couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the kaleidoscope of colorful birds in Watson Woods in Prescott.  So when I returned this past weekend, I was anticipating one more look at an exotic menagerie of grosbeaks and tanagers.  While I quickly saw the brilliant yellow of a male Bullock's oriole, I was initially disappointed when I didn't find the same birds as last time. Male Bullock's oriole. There was a difference with this visit versus my last one, as I opted to enter the woods from the south in order to explore the 2/3 of the parkland I hadn't yet seen.  The groves of trees were not as dense, and there were more open fields of plants and wildflowers than I had seen a short distance to the north.   Violet green swallows were more prevalent in this open space, soaring and darting in twisting arcs above and around me. Violet green swallow taking a break. Bumblebee and wildflower in the fields at Watson Woods. Not too long into my walk, I followed the s

Spotting a cardinal in the wild is always an exciting and colorful moment.  Many people call it the prettiest bird in the United States, and the fact that seven of our states call the red avian their state bird probably makes that official.  In fact, this popular species that is really called the northern cardinal to be exact, is just one of many in a quite colorful family of - technically speaking -  cardinalidae . Traditionally, there were just a few birds in this taxonomic family.   But recently, science has determined through genetics that a number of grosbeaks, tanagers and buntings also belong in this classification.  It turns out that an older method of categorizing birds by their sizes, colors, and beak shapes didn't stand up to modern molecular analysis. So even though all the members of this expanded family of birds don't have the same shaped bill, the males are almost always brilliantly colored.   And their beaks are all strong enough to eat seeds, a significant

Some of my earliest memories of growing up in suburban New Jersey revolve around feeding the birds.  My mother would regularly send my sister, brother or me out into the backyard to discard stale slices of bread, usually torn and crumbled into small pieces.  I can mostly remember doing this in the winter, when food wasn't as readily available for the chickadees and blue jays that didn't migrate to warmer climates.  When we moved from our second floor apartment to a house, we continued this practice.  But we also had a seed feeder, whose refilling was a frequent parental command. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to the animals that visited our yards.  Feeding the birds was a chore, like washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, and - I'm afraid to say - walking our dog Booboo.   But over forty years later, as a middle-aged man in Arizona, I've taken a much keener interest in the avian world around me.  When my partner and I bought our first house in Phoenix, it