Mike in the Wild

Migratory birds were on my mind when I visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on Monday morning.  But it was still a little early in the spring to see black-headed grosbeaks or Bullock's orioles, two species I've witnessed in the park before.  Someone on eBird reported seeing a black-chinned hummingbird there recently but I failed to encounter it.  Instead, I settled on photographing an Anna's hummingbird feeding her two chicks in their nest.  I also captured some shots of two quite common winter visitors to the local deserts: an orange-crowned warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler.   The next day I found myself much further away from the Valley's urban sprawl at Spur Cross Ranch Conservation Area.  Cave Creek was flowing through dense groves of cottonwood and mesquite trees, all framed by a landscape of saguaros rising up steep hillsides painted with wildflowers.  Only a biting chill delivered by relentless gusts of wind marred the pristine...

  Some of my earliest memories of growing up in suburban New Jersey involve feeding the birds.  My mother would regularly send my sister, brother, or me out into the backyard to spread stale slices of bread with the specific instructions to tear or crumble them into small pieces first.  I can mostly remember doing this in the winter, when food wasn't as readily available for the birds that didn't migrate to warmer climates.   I recall one bird in particular, the chickadee, above all others.  Maybe it was its comical name or perhaps its abundant population or even its ability to survive brutal winters despite its diminutive size that preserves the little bird in my mind after a half century.   That ancient memory might help explain the warm nostalgia I feel when the chickadee is one of the first birds I see when I visit my little mountain retreat in the woods outside Prescott.   It's consistently one of the fastest to rediscover my newly-...