A Green-tailed Towhee in Phoenix

Finding migratory birds in your hometown is exciting; in your backyard, sublime.  These brave birds sometimes travel thousands of miles, facing countless risks in their travels between winter habitats and summer breeding grounds.  When I encounter one in any location, I'm always awestruck, as I was when I photographed green-tailed towhee - a type of sparrow - visiting my Phoenix yard for the first time last week.

Change is creeping into the air as autumn takes an unusually slow hold on us in Arizona.  Despite hot temperatures, I've also migrated, leaving the mountains in the northern part of the state to fend for better or for worse in my desert home full-time.  Shorter days, longer shadows and cool nighttime temperatures are beginning to make record-setting 100 degree days a little bit more tolerable.  

Another sign that fall has arrived is that local golf courses have begun preparing their winter turfs.  Dethatching the thick Bermuda grass that thrives in the summer heat, the resorts have started overseeding a winter rye variety of lawn.  Many homeowners - myself included - are doing the same on their own properties.

Local birds love this transition in landscape as raking and scraping the old lawns uncovers new hunting territories.  And shortly afterwards, the scattering of rye seeds provides an irresistible feast.  House finches and house sparrows, along with mourning doves, gorge on the kernels like its their last meal or, more likely, their first satisfying one in months. 

In my backyard I recently heard the sweet songs of a white-crowned sparrows, a migratory bird that regularly winters in my neighborhood.  It hides in the bougainvillia behind my backyard wall, making hunting forays on to my property.  In addition I saw another visitor, a solitary male wood duck, among a few mallards dabbling along the nearby Arizona Canal.  And in Granada Park, I even saw dark-eyed juncos, birds that abound around my Prescott home during the summer.  So I shouldn't have been surprised when another long-distance traveler, the green-tailed towhee, made a brief appearance in my garden.  

The rhythms of the seasons are hopefully constant in their changes and cycles: wet to dry, green to brown, bloom to bust.  In Phoenix we manage to weather disruptions in these patterns through irrigation and sheltering, keeping the most unpleasant extremes outside our air-conditioned homes or just beyond our yard's block walls.  But still, surprises await, and this time, serendipitously, it was in the form of the most strikingly colorful sparrow I know. 

Green-tailed towhee in my Phoenix yard.

Green-tailed towhee in my Phoenix yard.