Two Last Hurrahs in Prescott

I marked the end of my fourteenth summer in Prescott in typical fashion, weedwacking desiccated wildflowers and covering deck furniture. I also refilled bird feeders for the last time this year, leaving sugar water for Anna's hummingbirds and suet and seeds for the menagerie of titmice, nuthatches, jays, and woodpeckers that call the trees in my neighborhood their year-round home. It wasn't the birds' last supper as they seem to manage well enough on the bounty of other humans along with that of the surrounding woods. Enjoying my last glimpses of these forest friends until the spring, I was struck by two surprises in my yard: a pair of red-naped sapsuckers and a first-time sighting of a red-breasted nuthatch.

Red-naped sapsuckers have appeared on my Prescott property at least twice before. Like this past weekend, the visits were in autumn and the birds were foraging high in the ponderosa pines. Sapsuckers appear to be seasonal visitors, never joining their cousins the acorn, hairy, and ladder-backed woodpeckers that spend the entire summer if not entire year in the vicinity of my cabin. The two male red-napeds may in fact just have been migrating through the area, destined to spend a warmer winter in Arizona's deserts.

I was much more surprised by the appearance of the red-breasted nuthatch, a bird that I've never seen in my Prescott yard or neighborhood. Meanwhile its cousins the pygmy and white-breasted nuthatches are plentiful year-round residents. From first-hand experience I know the red-breasted does indeed reside in the greater area as I've seen the species not too far away, high up on both Spruce Mountain and Mount Union. Like the red-naped sapsucker, the nuthatch may be migrating to lower elevations for the winter.

While I'll miss the activity at my Prescott feeders and around my property, new excitement is waiting for me at my home in Phoenix. Already a bright red male northern cardinal has started looking for sunflower seeds while at the same time I heard the first sweet songs of migratory white-crowned sparrows. Up the road, visiting American wigeons have joined the year-round mallards in the local park's ponds, Arizona welcome mats for even more snowbirds.