Mike in the Wild

My summers in Prescott always begin with much eagerness for the changes from my desert life in Phoenix: cool temperatures, dark night skies, monsoon thunder storms, verdant forest landscapes, an abundance of critters like skunks, and lots and lots of birds.   After nearing completion of my thirteenth season escaping some of the hottest temperatures in Arizona - not to mention record-breaking - I've not been disappointed on the subject of birds.  Every late spring I love reacquainting myself with the woodpeckers, jays, juncos, nuthatches and titmice that call the juniper and scrub oaks a full-time home.   But it might be the more challenging search for migratory birds that I most look forward to every year.  Plenty of neotropical birds that spend our cooler winter months in Central or South America breed in North America during our warm summer.  Orioles, warblers and cardinals are just a few of the avian families whose many species travel to or through ...

Birds sport every color imaginable and then even more because our feathered friends see ultra-violet light, invisible to our own human eyes.  But sometimes it seems that when we observe bird life in live action, it's a lot like watching an old movie, filmed in black and white, detailed only in hues of gray.  Of course there are a few colorful regulars at my Prescott seed and suet feeders, like that scarlet-headed male house finch.  And the male lesser goldfinch shines like a lemon drop sugar candy, brightly disproportionate to his diminutive size.  But the most notable visitors are the bushtits, titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers that are either black and white or, excuse my plagiarism, many shades of gray.   So it was especially exciting on the last day of August when I discovered some eye-catching birds at Granite Basin Lake Recreation Area, just a few miles away from my home.   The morning actually got off to a very slow start in terms of ...

Quarantined.  Locked down.  Housebound.  Shipwrecked.  Whatever it's called, staying home is mankind's only effective weapon in the war against COVID-19.  While self-relegated to my deck in chilly Prescott this past weekend, I was able to observe the much less restricted bird life visiting my trees and feeders.  For the first time in a couple of years, male black-headed grosbeaks partook in the peanut suet that makes up one course in my front yard's extensive bird food menu.   This migrating grosbeak is a regular summer visitor to Arizona's high mountain forests.  But I've also observed individuals in the lower Phoenix desert during their travels north from Mexico.  However I mostly see them in Prescott where they often stop at my cabin during the spring migration and then return during their late summer journey south.  A couple of pairs have probably chosen my wooded neighborhood to actually nest in as I have noticed a fledgling ...

Recognizing the call of an individual bird species is an exciting breakthrough in a birder's favorite pastime.  I can't count the number of times the metallic toot of a pair of cardinal's beckoned me from the house into my Phoenix backyard this past winter.  Just last weekend a much less familiar call - more of a quick, double-chortle than a tweet - quickly drew my attention to the other side of my Prescott home's screen door.  There I spied a male summer tanager nibbling at the suet feeder.  But not all sounds associated with birding are as alluring.  Window strikes are often cited as one of the leading causes of bird deaths, and, unfortunately, I've got firsthand experience with this occurrence.  Just two weeks ago, while busily typing on my computer in Phoenix, a thud over my shoulder startled me from my work, reminding me that my own garden and home might be an unwitting killer.   Outside my office window, splayed on the patio, an Abert's ...

I wanted to write an elegy, a serious reflection on watching a black-headed grosbeak die on my porch.  There was the thud, and the plop, and the ruffles, not to mention the tiny yellow feathers, when the bird hit the window.  There were my exclamations and futile attempts to call a bird rescue center, if one even existed in my mountain town.  But mostly there were the painful seconds and minutes that slowly ticked as the grosbeak stopped its desperate attempts to fly and succumbed to whatever serious internal injuries it suffered when it thought the bright reflection of my forested front yard was a safe space to fly and feed and live out this part of its summer. As I grasped for an appropriate funeral and as if on queue, the Laurel and Hardy of my yard, an acorn woodpecker and a Woodhouse's scrub jay, appeared on the scene to distract me.  The clownish woodpecker squawked because it wanted to feed on suet, the smart aleck jay squawked because it wanted one more pean...

There are lots of signs the seasons are changing - longer days, warmer temperatures and a few replacements in the neighborhood birds.   In Phoenix, my yard's white-crowned and Lincoln's sparrows have departed for cooler climates north, but the cliff swallows have reappeared from the south for nesting under bridges.  Meanwhile, farther north in the mountains some migrants have returned to their summer breeding grounds.  In Prescott specifically, I've just observed a male black-headed grosbeak visit my home's seed feeder.  This is the third year I've paid attention to the bird's comings and goings, and have enjoyed learning about the species in the process.  This particular grosbeak species winters in Mexico, with the nearest areas to Arizona being in the states of Baja California Sur or Sinaloa.  It may fly as far north as Western Canada in the summer, so this individual didn't expend as much energy in his migration as others in its family could hav...