Mike in the Wild

I flew four hours on a jet, sailed two days on a cruise ship, rode one hour in a van, and motored a half-hour in a boat - all to find my very first gartered trogon a couple of weeks ago.  In contrast last weekend it only took a ten-minute walk from my front door to discover my first male common goldeneye.   While the trogon was in far-away Belize, joined by several other exotic first-time finds that never venture into the United States, the goldeneye is actually a regular winter visitor to our country.  Every year I encounter a small number along the Arizona Canal that supplies fresh water to Phoenix and that also provides pathways on its banks for runners like me.  Just this past December I spied my first goldeneyes of the season, a pair of females, on one of my morning jogs.   They're distinctive birds for reasons besides their strikingly bright yellow eyes.  The goldeneyes' long migrations are impressive flights of great distances, reaching Ari...

The first time in a very long time that I saw a common goldeneye was two weeks ago, in a flock of mallards dabbling along the Arizona Canal during my morning jog on the adjacent path.  She was the lone representative of her species, a family of birds that migrates to warmer climates like Phoenix from their summer breeding grounds closer to the Arctic.   On my next run I noticed there were two of them, keeping to themselves a little further to the west on the same canal.  One of the female goldeneyes croaked a warning to the other when it seemed like I was paying too much attention to them.  However she had nothing to worry about because it was cold and I wanted to finish my jog and trot quickly home.   Not many days later, I discovered that the little group had become a threesome as a third girl had joined the tiny flock.  Of course it made me wonder about their migration habits and the timing of it all.  Do they fly together, at least at the...

Every stride on my six-mile morning run offers a unique opportunity for birdwatching.  Believe me when I say finding my feathered friends is a motivation to hit the trail on these recent chilly mornings, when I've not only needed a pair of gloves but also a neck gaiter and hat.  My last mile yesterday brought this point home when I was rewarded by spotting a female common goldeneye in a flock of mallards on the Arizona Canal. I wrote last summer about encountering a number of lesser nighthawks at the very beginning of my mostly routine, looped run through my little corner of Phoenix.  Those seasonal migrants were hunting just before daybreak, a time when I could avoid the sun during the hottest period of the year.  To get an early jump on busy days, I'm still starting my runs before sunrise, which is mercifully later now that winter is approaching.  I like to begin on the nearby Links golf course that leads lazily downhill to the Arizona Canal that acts as a rec...