Mike in the Wild

  Some of my earliest memories of growing up in suburban New Jersey involve feeding the birds.  My mother would regularly send my sister, brother, or me out into the backyard to spread stale slices of bread with the specific instructions to tear or crumble them into small pieces first.  I can mostly remember doing this in the winter, when food wasn't as readily available for the birds that didn't migrate to warmer climates.   I recall one bird in particular, the chickadee, above all others.  Maybe it was its comical name or perhaps its abundant population or even its ability to survive brutal winters despite its diminutive size that preserves the little bird in my mind after a half century.   That ancient memory might help explain the warm nostalgia I feel when the chickadee is one of the first birds I see when I visit my little mountain retreat in the woods outside Prescott.   It's consistently one of the fastest to rediscover my newly-...

The vrooms of jets landing and the roar of freeway traffic zipping by overhead are not the usual soundtracks accompanying wonderful birding excursions.  But the noise doesn't detract from the wide range of avian sightings available at the eastern end of Tempe Town Lake where the Salt River feeds a sprawling urban recreational area. The reservoir was created over twenty years ago when the river bed was dammed to created a two mile long body of water that covers over 200 acres.  Today it's circled by sidewalks, bike paths, hiking trails, parks and office towers, all situated directly under Sky Harbor's flightpaths and in the midst of crisscrossing five-lane expressways.  On the ground and water, the area is not only a destination for bikers, kayakers and fishermen, it's home to many species of birds.  The parking lot at the north end of Tempe Marketplace is the ideal location to leave your car and begin an exploration of the local birding grounds.  Cautiously shar...

There is one thing all the books neglect to tell you in their instructions on how to attract songbirds to your backyard and its feeders: your efforts also invite the predators of these birds.  Over the past few weeks I've observed a juvenile Cooper's hawk visiting the section of block wall where I periodically place sunflower seeds for a colorful pair of northern cardinals.  But the youngster is not interested in mere kernels; he's got his sharp eyesight set on a feathered meal. I've written quite a lot about the unwelcome visitors my bird feeding efforts have attracted like the hordes of mourning doves and house finches.  Well it turns out that the doves are actually a favorite food for hungry Cooper's hawks.  So I may have inadvertently stumbled upon  a natural solution to my pesky problem with the marauding seed-eaters.   There was a span of a few weeks where I daily counted at least seven or eight mourning doves lurking vulture-like in wait for han...

The vultures in my Phoenix backyard like to wreak havoc, creating  pandemonium every time I try to feed a couple of my favorite birds.  No sooner does the coy cardinal or the lame house finch procure one of my meager offerings of sunflower seeds than do hoards of mourning doves and house sparrows clamorously swoop down to swipe most of the kernels.  It's a precise choreography of timing and placement for me to call my targeted efforts any kind of success.  This feeding frenzy includes other birds, most notably towhees, thrashers, and white-crowned sparrows, the latter a regular winter migrant to my neighborhood.  In some very recent melees I noticed another seasonal visitor - a Lincoln's sparrow - making some stealthy appearances in the crowd. He never hovers or lurks expectantly, rather he darts quickly from the cover of the overflowing bougainvillea above the garden wall or from behind a potted cactus.  His flitting forays through the chaos seem calc...