Mike in the Wild

Barbecues, parades and fireworks are the quintessential elements of Fourth of July celebrations across the United States.  Unfortunately COVID-19 put a damper on the festivities in many communities this year, including in Prescott, Arizona, my summer home.  But an especially colorful sign of the holiday was on display: the rufous hummingbird.  I can't be exactly sure when these migratory birds first appeared in Yavapai County, but I do know that there were some reports of their appearances in the Flagstaff area at the end of June.  So I wasn't surprised when I caught my first glimpse of the rufous hummingbird in my tree-filled yard over the holiday weekend.  It was at the nectar feeder outside my living room window where I first saw the mature male.  His attempts at stealing some drinks were rebuffed by a resident male Anna's who had claimed the feeder in the spring shortly after I filled it.  Two years ago a rufous actually won the dogfights that ...

The new year has greeted Phoenix with chilly overnight temperatures that seem to make my backyard nectar feeder even more important to my neighborhood's hummingbirds.  As usual, a male Anna's has established control over his territory and is chasing other hungry hummers away.  Nevertheless, with persistence and guile, other birds are getting their own sips in at the feeder even if only for a brief moment.   At dusk, interestingly, the male's defenses must either be overwhelmed or they just call it a night as I've seen up to five or six birds at one time filling the eight spaces at the feeder.  It's the only time I see a mix of males, females and juveniles in such close proximity. While the Anna's hummingbird is the dominant species in my area of Phoenix, the Costa's has become a regular visitor to my yard during the winter.  This variety of the bird probably breeds further west and north along the Colorado River and in southern California during warme...

Arizona is home at least part of the year to almost twenty species of hummingbirds, more than in any other state in the union.  Most of these birds can be found in the far southern part of the state where high mountain terrains create ideal environments for a number of breeds whose range is mostly in Mexico.   Several hummingbirds migrate through the state between winter homes in Latin America and breeding homes in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest.  A species I've written about and photographed that makes this very journey is the rufous hummingbird.  Indeed some of my favorite posts have been about his summer stops at my Prescott home.  Now it turns out that at least on one occasion another migratory hummingbird has laid over at my home, but this time it was in sweltering Phoenix. When I caught the birding bug three years ago I photographed every bird I saw.  At the beginning, most pictures were poor but in the end they were helpful in...

Phoenix is blessed with beautiful autumn weather that guarantees every resident a welcome return to their patio after a summer's cloister indoors from the relentless heat.  Besides barbecuing and sunbathing, birding is a favorite seasonal backyard attraction, with our local hummingbirds getting star billing in that activity.  They're regular customers of the sugar water feeders we keep provisioned, in addition to the lantana, petunias and countless other flowers we grow in our yards.   While the state of Arizona attracts a large variety of migratory and seasonal hummingbirds, the sprawling city of Phoenix is home to predominately one, the Anna's.  It's most likely that the bird flashing his magenta gorget and head as he darts, buzzes and chirps about your backyard is a male member of this species.  But the local Sonoran Desert is also the full-time home to another hummingbird variety, the Costa's.  Less than two thirds the size of the Anna's, the d...

It's not everyday that I encounter a new species of hummingbird for the very first time.  Of course in my limited time birding it's not an unreasonable expectation as there are over three hundred known species.  But only a single one, the ruby-throated, visits most areas of the United States and Canada.  In large swathes of the West, almost ten  more are found depending on the season.  Lucky for us  in the Southwest, especially Arizona,  as many as twenty different species spend at least some time in the state as year-round, migratory or breeding residents.  So I had high expectations when I made my first visit to Patagonia near the Mexican border last weekend.  I made the almost three hour drive from my home in Phoenix even though it was long past the summer breeding season and just past fall migration.  My first stop there was at the Paton Center for Hummingbirds - with such a descriptive name I was bound to find some new specimens i...

Every backyard hummingbird feeder in Arizona will attract at least one of the diminutive birds.  In my Phoenix yard, a male Anna's hummingbird always seems to claim it as his own, fiercely fighting other visitors away.  I can't identify individual birds with any high degree of certainty, but I'm pretty sure any specific 'alpha-male' only dominates the area several months at a time.  Then, a new, more aggressive replacement moves into the territory. Many Anna's remain in Phoenix all year, while others seem to migrate to cooler climates north during the hot summer.   The fellow hanging out at the moment is relatively calm and cooperative - not words I usually associate with a hummingbird!  At least he is for some photographs.  The close-up pictures confirm that his gorget or neck feathers, along with those on his head, are not as bright and full as those on mature males.  Maybe he's filling a gap in the territory, left free when a stronger, more experi...

When I moved to Arizona from Philadelphia, I was immediately struck by the sharp contrast in climate and landscape between the two locales.  I quickly became a fan of Tucson's Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a showcase for the flora, fauna and geology of my new home.  Almost 30 years later, I'm still a regular visitor and still learning about the unique environment of the Sonoran Desert. One interesting and possibly misleading detail about the ASDM - as many shorten the name - is that it's called a museum.   Most of us think of that word in the context of static displays of art, artifacts and taxidermied animals.  However it's success relies on the visitor's interaction with mostly living outdoor subjects as it merges the features of zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums and art galleries.   Not only is it a one-of-a kind experience, it's also situated in a beautifully mountainous and verdant area of Tucson, in the heart of the saguaro-filled desert i...