Four Warblers in the Desert

Migratory birds were on my mind when I visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on Monday morning. But it was still a little early in the spring to see black-headed grosbeaks or Bullock's orioles, two species I've witnessed in the park before. Someone on eBird reported seeing a black-chinned hummingbird there recently but I failed to encounter it. Instead, I settled on photographing an Anna's hummingbird feeding her two chicks in their nest. I also captured some shots of two quite common winter visitors to the local deserts: an orange-crowned warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler.

The next day I found myself much further away from the Valley's urban sprawl at Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area. Cave Creek was flowing through dense groves of cottonwood and mesquite trees, all framed by a landscape of saguaros rising up steep hillsides painted with wildflowers. Only a biting chill delivered by relentless gusts of wind marred the pristine beauty of the morning.

Hiking Jewel of the Creek Preserve provided some shelter from the wind as a canyon shelters this small corner of the park. Black-throated sparrows, lesser goldfinches, phainopeplas, and verdins, all year-round stalwarts of the desert, braved the blustery weather. Closer to the creek was a flycatcher, probably a cordilleran, a bird just arriving into the area for its summer breeding season.

But I was more captivated by a much smaller bird even closer to the wide, babbling creek. Since it tweeted incessantly as it flitted non-stop through a tree's branches, I first I thought it was a bushtit, a plain, common bird in the pine and oak forests at higher elevations across Arizona. However I noticed my subject had a patch of brown feathers on its cap which helped me later identify the bird as a male Lucy's warbler. Not only was he a long-distance migrant venturing into the state for breeding just like the flycatcher, it was my first-ever sighting of this species!

I ventured back into the vast wilderness of Spur Cross Ranch, hiking Metate Trail that lines the north bank of Cave Creek. A forest of mesquite trees rimmed by towering saguaros provided plenty of habitat for birds as well as acting as a windbreak from the still-blustery weather. A female northern cardinal hid in one especially dense thicket which created a blind that my lens struggled to penetrate. A manmade watering hole, called the Solar Oasis, attracts a number of night-roaming mammals like bobcats and skunks, but only offered me some shots of a ruby-crowned kinglet.

However nearby along Metate, unique calls and then a flash of yellow attracted my attention. Through my lens I focused on the bird and captured several crisp shots. Lemon yellow neck feathers and a jet black mask identified my handsome target as a male common yellowthroat, my second first-time warbler find that day! I was overjoyed to discover him during his migration to summer breeding grounds as distant as the Yukon.

Alongside imposing saguaros displaying arms in gravity-defying configurations, the trail meandered before crossing Cave Creek and connecting with Spur Cross trail. Climbing high above the riverbed, the wind picked up again, but not before I photographed the reddest male cardinal I've ever seen in Arizona. During the hike back I saw flocks of white-crowned sparrows amidst a variety of chollas. I might have also encountered a Townsend's solitaire who, like the sparrows, would have been visiting the desert for the winter.

On the long drive back home it was only traveling warblers on my mind. The yellow-rumped and orange-crowned from the day before: city-slickers for at least a little while, sticking close to the wide variety of flora available in Phoenix's curated and manicured desert habitat. But mostly I thought about the Lucy's and the yellowthroat, much less common visitors, living off the bounty of the wild Sonoran Desert after a cool, wet, and frequently windy winter.