Birding at Tempe Town Lake

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 sharing the same trail as the whirring bicyclists on the Rio Salado Pathway, you get a bird's eye view of restored native habitat along the Salt River. Even if the birds were too far way for the naked eye to immediately identify them, the calls of gilded flickers, verdins, gnatcatchers, hummingbirds, and towhees were a quick reminder you were in the Sonoran Desert. Especially fascinating to see was a loggerhead shrike, a songbird that uniquely feeds on other songbirds: a rare kind of bird and a rare encounter for me.

Beyond the mesquite and cottonwood trees the river ambles under the massive columns that hold up the steel girders and platforms of the Loop 202 freeway. Seemingly oblivious to the din above, a flock of snowy egrets gathered in a tree while much larger great egrets and great blue herons fished solitarily in the shallow water below. Seasonal migrants like northern shovelers and ring-necked ducks flocked nearby.

The shadows of Southwest and Delta jets intermittently blotted the landscape, prompting me to look up from time to time. In a flash I caught a glimpse and a shot of an osprey flying upriver with a fish in its talons. It was a catch from Tempe Town Lake, and a reminder for me to keep heading west on the path, under McClintock Road, to where the engineered lake begins.

Concrete walls along the river channel and a few remnants of an abandoned dam - overcrowded with cormorants on the afternoon of my visit - define where the verdant Salt River becomes a wide urban reservoir. Near that location the bike path cuts close to the edge of the water so there are excellent opportunities to view the water fowl. In fact on my own walk I quickly saw a flock of three green-winged teals, migratory ducks visiting the Valley for the winter. And thanks to my zoom lens I could make out other seasonal residents further away: hooded mergansers, common buffleheads, and ruddy ducks.

While I wasn't surprised to see a belted kingfisher, I was shocked that I was able to get so close to the bird. He made frequent forays from a scrawny tree, just below the trail, as he dove for his lunch of fish. Normally the species is wary of any attention I pay it, never allowing me to approach it for photographs.

Tempe Town Lake allows small boats including kayaks. I watched one kayaker head east out of the reservoir, into the wooded area along the Salt River. Enviously I also wanted to be out on the water, dreamily closer to more of the birds sunning, dabbling and diving all around. "No trespassing" signs and warnings of fines and jail time abruptly prevented me - but not several illegal campers - from hiking down to the water's edge of the oasis. Meanwhile overhead, lumbering lone egrets and synchronized flocks of cormorants reminded me that the views were pretty good from just about everywhere.