Mike in the Wild

All it took was a glance from the deck into my Prescott yard to beckon me back to the warbler trail.  Looking up from my lunch toward a scraggly alligator juniper that's more of a bush than a tree, I spotted a peripatetic bird with a bright yellow head.  If I were in Phoenix, I'd have supposed it was a verdin, but among the pines at over a mile high I surmised it was a male hermit warbler.  And just like that, I was back to chasing warblers, reaching a new count of eleven individual species for the year.   The next day at close to the same time I witnessed another warbler, darting from branch to branch in the oak trees of my front yard.  I saw distinct black stripes which made me think it was a black and white warbler, an uncommon migratory bird to the area.  Circling my yard, I only captured a picture of a Bewick's wren high in a ponderosa pine tree.  I simply couldn't be as sure with this second warbler.  A couple of days later, I hit the f...

This time last year I was writing about mushrooms and their variety of sizes, shapes, and colors sprouting along the trails surrounding my Prescott neighborhood.  Alas, a dearth of monsoon rain - not even four inches accumulated by mid-August - has greatly diminished the normal eruption of both mushrooms and wildflowers.  Fortunately another bellwether of the health of the area's summer life, the cardinals, haven't disappointed me.  It only took one visit to my cabin in late spring to see a profusion of black-headed grosbeak's at my feeders.  They've been multiplying in number all summer, raising offspring and eating well from my larder before their migration south next month.  Meanwhile even though they usually don't partake in the suet or seeds, I've sighted western tanagers several times in my yard.  And for the very first time, a male lazuli bunting recently started drinking from a bird bath and eating my seeds. Very early in the season I noticed summer...