Zero Band-tailed Doves, One Western Tanager

I started the weekend in Prescott determined to photograph a band-tailed dove.  Flocking in large numbers, the species is supposed to nest in the forests around Prescott during the summer.  I've most likely ignored them on numerous hikes because I've assumed they were mourning doves, among the most common birds across Arizona.  After so many slights, I decided it was time to finally pause and appreciate the band-tailed variety.

On a recent run through the woods near my cabin, I possibly spooked a few of these doves as I approached them.  The problem is I can't be sure I saw the namesake white bands on their outspread tails as they quickly flew away.  However I'm pretty sure these feathers had a wide, flat shape in sharp contrast to the pointed outline of the mourning doves'.  Alas, even had I lugged my heavy camera and lens along on my run, I'd not have been fast enough to snap an identifying shot.

Last week, on another run, I noticed a pair of large pigeons perched upon a utility line above Hereford Road.  I paused to look up, again unnerving the birds enough that they quickly took flight.  Before they absconded, however, I thought I saw a marking on the back of at least one of their necks, another differentiation from mourning doves.  Yet it might have been a dark line, not a white one, making the bird an Eurasian collared dove.  And again, I didn't have a camera or the time to record my encounter.

Early the next morning I looked out my living room window toward my cabin's bird feeders when I noticed a pair of pigeons on the nearest eave, just a few feet from the food.  Initially they looked like rock pigeons, plump and purplish, but I quickly realized I've never seen those city birds in my Prescott neighborhood.  Fortunately I wasn't running and I was in my home so my camera was nearby.  However in the seconds it took to grab it the birds flew off, escaping my attention.

I was excited, convinced it was my destiny to see a band-tailed dove because the bird was actually seeking me, or at least my bird seed anyway.  Senses on high alert, I carried my camera with zoom lens outside to the deck and scanned the nearby treetops, every pine, oak, and juniper in sight.  Alas no band-tailed doves.  It was chilly, too cool for my t-shirt, shorts, and thin socks, so I didn't linger long.  But I returned regularly over the next half-hour, peering into the feeders through my door's tiny window so not to scare any visitors with the noise of the front door opening. 

Not ready to give up, I was gazing from the living room beyond the deck into the front yard when a flash of yellow caught my eye.  Focusing I soon saw the bright, flaming red head of the bird, a sure identification of a male western tanager.  I located my camera and snapped some shots through the window.  As the bird flew from bush to tree to bush, pausing on any given branch for only a second, I crossed my living room to the dining room, following the tanager's flight plan from west to east.  

The bird ignored my suet hanging twenty feet away from it, preferring to snatch whatever bugs infested the leaves of my property's plants.  When I carefully slid the dining room's glass door open to get a bit closer to the tanager, it flew away.  Scanning the skies, trees, and neighbor's yard in the direction of the visitor's flight, I realized he was gone.  

I had never seen a western tanager in my yard or even neighborhood.  It's in a striking family of birds, the cardinalidae, that includes many other seasonal migrants, almost every one having visited my property at least once.  These long-distance fliers are as colorful as their names suggest: black-headed grosbeaks, summer tanagers, blue grosbeaks, hepatic tanagers, lazuli buntings, and rose-breasted grosbeaks.  And, finally, a western tanager joined the list.

Not content with just one big find in a weekend, I was still obsessed with the band-tailed doves.  My morning continued with a four-mile hike on a few trails that circle my wooded community.  While I saw western bluebirds, hawks, ravens, and cordilleran flycatchers, I didn't find one dove, band-tailed or otherwise.  I did hear distant coos several times, emanating from deep in a canyon or from high in the treetops. "Better luck next weekend," is what I imagined them telling me.

Male western tanager in my Prescott yard last weekend.

My better capture of male western tanager in Watson Woods in Prescott several years ago.