Mike in the Wild

They're back.  It was three years ago when I first observed cliff swallows swooping and nesting along the canal that divides my Phoenix neighborhood into two halves.  And it was ever since that I wondered whether they'd ever return.  But they didn't, at least not to their expected nesting spots, until now.   While many migratory birds spend the winter in the cool and mild weather of Arizona's deserts, those same birds travel north for their summer breeding season.  It's quite normal to see white-crowned sparrows and green-winged teals in the area in January but by the summer they escape the sweltering heat to breed as far north as Canada. But cliff swallows are not limited to just the North America continent in their own migrations.  They spend our winters in South America, as far south as Argentina, and travel to our northern hemisphere, including Arizona, for a summer breeding season.   While their nesting habitat used to be limited to western river canyons, a

Two weeks ago, "The New Yorker" featured a cartoon cover showing a cardinal father dotingly tending to his chicks in a nest secured in a normally improbable spot: atop a traffic signal in a crowded urban neighborhood.  Titled "Shelter in Place," the artwork shows a woman looking at the birds longingly from her open apartment window.   It might be ironic that in our current period of pandemic it feels like our quieter streets and landscapes are making us safer from other threats.  As a runner, I can attest firsthand that there are fewer cars whipping by on the normally busy roads and that the Phoenix air is much cleaner.  But is it possible that sports-minded humans are not the only species benefiting from the lockdown?   Most notable on my runs along the Arizona Canal are the mallard ducklings that have recently hatched.  I have seen broods as large as seven individual babies and as small as four.  But what's fascinating is that after two or three weeks, many

That tweet emanating from your backyard?  It's a house finch.  The crowds of birds flocking to your bird feeders?  They're house finches.  The birds building a nest in the cranny under your home's eaves?  Again, house finches.  And the birds who laid pale blue eggs in a completely different nest in the wheel well of your coronavirus-idled car?  Yep, still house finches.  Sometimes it seems like they're the only bird species in the wild. While quite common throughout many natural habitats in the western United States, they're especially prevalent in urban environments.  The males are more colorful than the females, who are drabber and lack the bright red plumage on their heads and torsos.  With such a multitude of them, they seem to join rock pigeons and house sparrows as quintessential city birds, scraping by on mankind's limitless detritus.   So I wasn't overly excited a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a small female house finch eying the seeds in my

Quarantined.  Locked down.  Housebound.  Shipwrecked.  Whatever it's called, staying home is mankind's only effective weapon in the war against COVID-19.  While self-relegated to my deck in chilly Prescott this past weekend, I was able to observe the much less restricted bird life visiting my trees and feeders.  For the first time in a couple of years, male black-headed grosbeaks partook in the peanut suet that makes up one course in my front yard's extensive bird food menu.   This migrating grosbeak is a regular summer visitor to Arizona's high mountain forests.  But I've also observed individuals in the lower Phoenix desert during their travels north from Mexico.  However I mostly see them in Prescott where they often stop at my cabin during the spring migration and then return during their late summer journey south.  A couple of pairs have probably chosen my wooded neighborhood to actually nest in as I have noticed a fledgling or two over the years.   In any