Mike in the Wild

A sure sign that spring migration is underway was my sighting a pair of hooded orioles in my Phoenix neighborhood last weekend.  His flash of bright yellow swooping into a treetop identified the male, while only her presence accompanying the male initially pointed out the female.  They passed through quickly, pausing only long enough for me to get several lucky shots.   The couple joined a list of songbird migrations that started with a flock of cedar waxwings in my community two weeks earlier.  While the waxwings will travel to Canada for breeding, the orioles could actually stick around Phoenix to build their nests after wintering not too far away in Mexico.  I've not been fortunate in seeing one of the latter species' elaborate nests that appear like a hanging basket often descending from a tall palm tree. Eager to encounter additional migrating birds, I headed on Monday to the Rio Salado Restoration Area near downtown Phoenix.  Bordering the Salt R...

A year ago I only saw dry riverbed when I peered over the walkway from the bridge on the east side of McClintock Drive in Tempe.  Quite a few camps of homeless people littered a dry landscape peppered with mesquite trees.  A coyote meandered from the shoreline of Tempe Town Lake fifty feet behind me, where the man-made lake began at a concrete barrier spanning most of the width of the waterway.   However last week, at the end of an exceptionally wet winter across the state, only treetops remained visible as the Salt River ran unimpeded.  It was as free and wild as the coyotes and the campers who had escaped the deluge.  Only birds were on the scene, but not the winter-visiting species I observed on my last visit.  Gone were the northern shovelers and gadwalls that skimmed the shallow ponds edging the exposed river bottom as it feebly fed the lake.  Of course, the ponds were now obliterated, merged into one wide, raging river.  Amidst the eddi...