Mike in the Wild

After eight months away from the mountains of northern Arizona, I was eager to visit Watson Woods as soon as I settled back in my summer home in Prescott in late May.  The riparian preserve has always promised sightings of migratory birds like tanagers, grosbeaks, and occasionally even orioles.  Just as exciting have been the nesting great horned owls that I have witnessed.  However I wasn't expecting the posters along the park's trails alerting me to nesting bald eagles in the vicinity.  After scouring the landscape over the course of two visits, I was thrilled to observe both a fledged eagle and at least one of its dedicated parents.   Several summers ago while kayaking, I watched a bald eagle as it perched within the Dells, an expansive range of boulders and rock formations that border the northern end of Granite Lake.  Watson Woods lie at the southern end of the manmade lake, where Granite Creek normally fills the reservoir.  (A dry winter has...

By now, most seasonal visitors to Arizona's deserts have decamped for cooler climates north.  Any recreational vehicles you see on the state's highways are either heading in that direction or toward a pleasant seaside coast.  Likewise, many birds have taken weather cues and migrated to chillier breeding grounds. I thought I had exhausted all my chances of uncovering new, unseen-before winter visitors on the area waterways after I discovered my first canvasbacks and common mergansers in January.  But the season had one more treat in store for me after I ran into some buffleheads on Watson Lake in cooler Prescott this past week. While I did actually photograph a pair of males on nearby Willow Lake last year, this year I finally got to see a female along with what might be her breeding partner.  This species of duck doesn't tend to flock in any sizable numbers, and while they don't necessarily mate for life, individual males and females tend to breed and migrate tog...

With a couple of years birding already under my belt, I usually aim for better shots of species I've previously encountered or targeted when I return to a favorite birding site.   While summer tanagers and blue grosbeaks were in my dreams  on my return to Prescott's Watson Lake this weekend, I was excited to see instead my very first sora. It's a bird that's never been on my radar, a member of a genus of waterbirds know as rails.  Part of a larger family of birds including gallinules and coots, I only heard of the rail rather late in my birding adventure.  In fact, I spotted him not too far from a flock of mallards, initially thinking that he was one of their ducklings.  But he stayed to himself in the shallow lake's grasses, flitting from clump to clump while flicking his tail feathers in the air.   While the sora is the most widespread of North America's rails, it is no wonder he wasn't on my short list as he tends to stay hidden in thick gr...

My first trip to Watson Woods in Prescott was almost a year ago.  It seems that every one of my visits since to this restored native preserve along Granite Creek and adjacent Watson Lake has guaranteed a breakthrough moment in my birding adventures.    The list of exciting new encounters is still growing as attested in my finding my first western tanager in the park over the weekend.  But a year's time has brought many other firsts, including bald eagles, wood ducks, white-faced ibises, violet green swallows, summer tanagers and blue grosbeaks.    And as the following collection of photos from Sunday demonstrate, any walk in these woods is a feast for the nature lover.  Male Wilson's warbler. Female Wilson's warbler. Blue grosbeak. Yellow warbler. Male Bullock's oriole. Red-tailed hawk. A type of flycatcher, probably a western wood pee-wee.  One of several deer crossing the trail. Violet-green swallo...

The ibis is not a bird that I usually think of when out exploring in the Arizona landscape.  I associate it with Africa, and Egypt specifically, somehow familiarizing myself with the bird by seeing its ancient hieroglyphics and statues in a museum, on PBS or in a "National Geographic."  A little research shows that the species known as the African sacred ibis was indeed venerated by the Egyptians, and was associated with the deity Thoth, who among other things, was responsible for writing and mathematics.  As a result, the ibis was featured as the first hieroglyph, and a number of millennium later, its long, down-curved bill was forever embedded in my memory. Ibises form a large family ( threskiornithidae) of wading birds with up to 34 species distributed worldwide.  It's not uncommon to see a few varieties of them in Florida and along the gulf coast, but in the West we mostly have just one - the white-faced ibis.  In this part of the country, they tend to ...

Birders follow lots of hunches when choosing where to lug their field glasses and zoom lenses.  Social media, newspapers, clubs and casual chats on park trails are all ways to communicate the location of new and interesting finds.  So when I recently visited Watson Lake with the singular goal of finding an ibis, it was because the local paper's weekly bird column had reported that flocks were migrating through the area.  I'm happy to say I scored a direct hit.  In fact I found several of the uncommon visitors, and with some sneaking and good luck, I was able to get some excellent shots of white-faced ibises. There's a wonderful sense of accomplishment when you have a clear goal, and then a successful outcome.  But for me, the real excitement of birding are the surprises that excursions in the outdoors iinevitably bring. Prescott's Watson Lake and the adjacent preserve in Watson Woods are beautiful riparian areas housing many examples of  high country ...