Mike in the Wild

We all know that the best laid plans often go awry, as says my rough paraphrase of Robert Burn's famous line.  However I'm happy to say that I was not disappointed when I set out to see a bald eagle in Glendale this week.  Within two minutes of parking my car on the dirt road ending at the southeast corner of the municipality's recharge ponds, I spied a white-headed bird of prey a couple of hundred yards away.  It was high atop a utility pole where I couldn't tell if it was an eagle or a much more common osprey.  After a few more minutes walking north along the dusty eastern pathway, I was able to confirm my wildest dream: it was was a bald eagle. While finding the symbol of our nation was the goal of my short outing, success was in no way guaranteed.  Yes, a nesting pair has regularly been identified in the area.  Yes, a desert variety of the raptor numbering in the hundreds populates the long waterways of Central Arizona throughout the year.  And yes, I have indeed se

The last time I wrote about Bullock's orioles was in a David and Goliath story.  A pair of the orioles was in a confrontation with two much bigger black hawks.  The orioles were vociferously protesting the birds of preys' attack on their nest.  In fact it was worse than that: the black hawks had stolen the nest and were most likely feasting on any eggs or nestlings inside it. Fortunately it was early in the orioles' nesting season, so they still had a chance at raising another brood that summer.  These birds migrate through Arizona every summer after wintering throughout Mexico.  The nest-plundering I described was in Page Springs near Sedona, so some Bullock's orioles remain in the state when they find good nesting habitat. However I suspect Phoenix and its surrounding desert are not a summer destination for the birds.  But plenty of the orioles pass through the parched Valley on their way north, as I was reminded on a visit to the Desert Botanical Garden this week. Th