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 ...

The large number of cardinals that migrate through or into Arizona, not to mention the two colorful species of the family that live here year-round, were an early source of inspiration and excitement when I caught the birding bug a couple of years ago.   The scarlet-colored northern cardinal ranges over a wide swath of the state and its drabber cousin, the pyrrhuloxia, lives in the lower third, with both residing here year-round.  But most other members of the cardinalidae family that we might see are migrants, coming seasonally into the state for summer breeding or flying  through en route to their seasonal homes north or south.  It was this latter case when a lazuli bunting pair showed up briefly in my Prescott yard last spring.   What was the chance that during this year's fall migration the same bird might show up in my yard during its trip homeward?  Slim to none was my first thought, and to date I've not had to question that calcula...