Recognizing the call of an individual bird species is an exciting breakthrough in a birder's favorite pastime. I can't count the number of times the metallic toot of a pair of cardinal's beckoned me from the house into my Phoenix backyard this past winter. Just last weekend a much less familiar call - more of a quick, double-chortle than a tweet - quickly drew my attention to the other side of my Prescott home's screen door. There I spied a male summer tanager nibbling at the suet feeder.
But not all sounds associated with birding are as alluring. Window strikes are often cited as one of the leading causes of bird deaths, and, unfortunately, I've got firsthand experience with this occurrence. Just two weeks ago, while busily typing on my computer in Phoenix, a thud over my shoulder startled me from my work, reminding me that my own garden and home might be an unwitting killer.
Outside my office window, splayed on the patio, an Abert's towhee writhed on its back, disoriented. I hurriedly retrieved a large shoe box, a dark enclosure that sometimes allows a stunned hummingbird - a more frequent victim - to regain its bearings in quiet solitude after hitting a window. But the towhee wouldn't let me approach, and somehow leapt in the air, fluttering away over my backyard's high wall.
Hearing the thump of a fast-moving bird collide with hard, cold glass is distressing. The towhee's strike was a sort of PTSD moment for me, taking me back to my Prescott deck almost a year ago, when a migratory bird, a black-headed grosbeak, struck my sliding glass door with the exact same sound as I sat reading on the deck just a few feet away. While it took the bird only five or six minutes to die atop my hastily conceived magazine rescue nest, I struggled with the guilt of the event for a big part of the summer. How could I be such a danger to the fascinating wildlife I love so much?
Attracting birds with garden feeders is an easy way to observe the wonders of the avian branch of the animal kingdom. But windows are deadly, so screen and adhesive covers are mandatory if you want to place seeds or suet anywhere near your home. It's easy for a bird to think that the reflection shimmering in your bay window is the real-life safety of your cozy neighborhood.
Migratory birds often fly at night and strike tall buildings that lie in their paths. So I shouldn't have been surprised last summer when I found the corpse of a lazuli bunting on a sidewalk in downtown Prescott. The bird lay near a three-story brick edifice built above a parking garage. I'm not a detective, but I could imagine that before the accident the colorful male bunting was following the course of nearby Granite Creek on part of his southbound flight back to wintering grounds in Mexico.
I snapped a shot of the dead bird with my phone's camera. (Why didn't I respectfully bury his body in my yard, like I did the grosbeak just a couple of months before?) He's a gorgeous animal, fittingly sharing a name with a blue gemstone, the lapis lazuli. Because the birds share similar colors, neighbors have mistaken the much more common and sedentary western bluebird for this long distance traveler. But he's in a completely different family of birds, the mostly subtropical cardinalidae, a grouping that includes many grosbeaks and tanagers, in addition to America's favorite bird, the northern cardinal.
Witnessing the effects of three window strikes in less than a year is a tough burden for the most seasoned of naturalists. But my recent Abert's towhee incident took a better turn when I miraculously discovered the struggling bird in my front yard the following morning after my jog. He was still mostly prone on his backside, dragging himself in circles; his wings couldn't seem to orient himself. Exhausted and hungry, he wasn't difficult to place into a tissue paper-lined shoebox and to bring to Liberty Wildlife, an animal rescue center that was quick to admit him.
Due to the large number of admissions, Liberty can't update the public on individual cases. But the towhee was in the best possible hands, and if he hopefully recovers, the center will find a safe place to release him back into the wild.
Also on a happy note, a hundred miles away just this past weekend, I spotted a male lazuli bunting in a scrub oak tree in my Prescott front yard. The location was close to the same spot where almost two years ago to the date I observed two individuals of the species for the very first time in my life.
That couple were a male and female pair, at the beginning of migration season, probably heading to a breeding location further north in the States. Last week's lone male was most likely doing the same. While there's little I can do to guarantee a safe journey for this year's solo traveler, it's heartening to know that at least one individual made it home to Mexico last season. May many more of his kind be tough enough for this summer's big adventure.
But not all sounds associated with birding are as alluring. Window strikes are often cited as one of the leading causes of bird deaths, and, unfortunately, I've got firsthand experience with this occurrence. Just two weeks ago, while busily typing on my computer in Phoenix, a thud over my shoulder startled me from my work, reminding me that my own garden and home might be an unwitting killer.
Outside my office window, splayed on the patio, an Abert's towhee writhed on its back, disoriented. I hurriedly retrieved a large shoe box, a dark enclosure that sometimes allows a stunned hummingbird - a more frequent victim - to regain its bearings in quiet solitude after hitting a window. But the towhee wouldn't let me approach, and somehow leapt in the air, fluttering away over my backyard's high wall.
Hearing the thump of a fast-moving bird collide with hard, cold glass is distressing. The towhee's strike was a sort of PTSD moment for me, taking me back to my Prescott deck almost a year ago, when a migratory bird, a black-headed grosbeak, struck my sliding glass door with the exact same sound as I sat reading on the deck just a few feet away. While it took the bird only five or six minutes to die atop my hastily conceived magazine rescue nest, I struggled with the guilt of the event for a big part of the summer. How could I be such a danger to the fascinating wildlife I love so much?
Attracting birds with garden feeders is an easy way to observe the wonders of the avian branch of the animal kingdom. But windows are deadly, so screen and adhesive covers are mandatory if you want to place seeds or suet anywhere near your home. It's easy for a bird to think that the reflection shimmering in your bay window is the real-life safety of your cozy neighborhood.
Migratory birds often fly at night and strike tall buildings that lie in their paths. So I shouldn't have been surprised last summer when I found the corpse of a lazuli bunting on a sidewalk in downtown Prescott. The bird lay near a three-story brick edifice built above a parking garage. I'm not a detective, but I could imagine that before the accident the colorful male bunting was following the course of nearby Granite Creek on part of his southbound flight back to wintering grounds in Mexico.
I snapped a shot of the dead bird with my phone's camera. (Why didn't I respectfully bury his body in my yard, like I did the grosbeak just a couple of months before?) He's a gorgeous animal, fittingly sharing a name with a blue gemstone, the lapis lazuli. Because the birds share similar colors, neighbors have mistaken the much more common and sedentary western bluebird for this long distance traveler. But he's in a completely different family of birds, the mostly subtropical cardinalidae, a grouping that includes many grosbeaks and tanagers, in addition to America's favorite bird, the northern cardinal.
Witnessing the effects of three window strikes in less than a year is a tough burden for the most seasoned of naturalists. But my recent Abert's towhee incident took a better turn when I miraculously discovered the struggling bird in my front yard the following morning after my jog. He was still mostly prone on his backside, dragging himself in circles; his wings couldn't seem to orient himself. Exhausted and hungry, he wasn't difficult to place into a tissue paper-lined shoebox and to bring to Liberty Wildlife, an animal rescue center that was quick to admit him.
Due to the large number of admissions, Liberty can't update the public on individual cases. But the towhee was in the best possible hands, and if he hopefully recovers, the center will find a safe place to release him back into the wild.
Also on a happy note, a hundred miles away just this past weekend, I spotted a male lazuli bunting in a scrub oak tree in my Prescott front yard. The location was close to the same spot where almost two years ago to the date I observed two individuals of the species for the very first time in my life.
That couple were a male and female pair, at the beginning of migration season, probably heading to a breeding location further north in the States. Last week's lone male was most likely doing the same. While there's little I can do to guarantee a safe journey for this year's solo traveler, it's heartening to know that at least one individual made it home to Mexico last season. May many more of his kind be tough enough for this summer's big adventure.
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| A lone male lazuli bunting in my Prescott front yard last weekend. |
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| A lone male lazuli bunting in my Prescott front yard. |
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| A lone male lazuli bunting in my Prescott front yard. |
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| A lone male lazuli bunting in my Prescott front yard. |
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| A male lazuli bunting, downtown Prescott, after a probable building strike, August 2019. |
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