Labor Day weekend in Navajo County

This past Labor Day weekend I spent some time at spots within southern Navajo County (including visiting home in Heber). First, on Saturday I led a trip for Northern Arizona Audubon to some wastewater ponds, agricultural fields, a reservoir, and abandoned tree farm in Holbrook which acts as a "migrant trap" for birds (being some of the only suitable habitat on the sparsely-vegetated Colorado Plateau). One of the highlights of the trip was hearing a Red-breasted Nuthatch (typically a species of spruce-fir forests) calling from a patch of tamarisks next to the wastewater ponds. Interestingly, this is the third fall in a row that I have encountered a single bird of this species at this exact same location (so presumably the same bird). Usually the species is only seen in lower elevations during irruption years where they are in search of food, so this seems odd for a particular bird to migrate year after year (or to at least go foraging out of its typical habitat). The monsoon rains have produced lots of food region-wide too, so it would not seem that Red-breasted Nuthatches would need to seek out food in the lowlands. Other cool birds included 4 Greater White-fronted Geese, 1 Black-crowned Night-Heron, 4 White-faced Ibises, 3 Soras, 20 Red-necked Phalaropes, 1 Greater Roadrunner, 1 Belted Kingfisher, 1 Sage Thrasher, and six warbler species.

Later in the afternoon I headed home to Heber. On the way, the sunset was pretty good while driving Hwy. 377 south of Holbrook. I stopped and shot a few pics above the Pink Cliffs (before entering the valley below the wind turbines):

On Monday morning before heading back to Flagstaff, my family and I went hiking around one of the mixed conifer groves south of Heber in Black Canyon. The groves are comprised of white firs, Douglas-firs, ponderosa pines, and some large Gambel oaks growing in snowmelt drainages that flow north from the edge of the Mogollon Rim. There are several of these groves that survived the nearly half-million acre Rodeo-Chediski fire of 2002 and still provide habitat to birds such as Mexican Spotted Owls, Northern Goshawks, and Red-faced Warblers. On this trip we didn't see any owls, but highlights included 1 Williamson's Sapsucker, 1 Swainson's Thrush, 4 Painted Redstarts (rare above the Mogollon Rim), and eight other warbler species (Olive, Nashville, Townsend's, Hermit, Yellow-rumped, MacGillivray's, Wilson's, and Red-faced). Here are some pics of the sapsucker,the grove we were at (which is just east of Black Canyon Lake), a baby horned-lizard, and a beehive that was in a crack in the bark of an old-growth white fir (the crevice was swarming with bees, although in the photograph it's hard to see them and they appear bunched together as brown blobs):

Around the yard in Heber the wildflower show is still going strong and our scarlet lobelia's (Lobelia cardinalis) keep producing more and more flowers. The sunflower patches are also attracting insects and migrating warblers going after them. Over the weekend we individual Orange-crowned, Nashville, and Wilson's Warblers hanging around the yard. Other cool yard birds included Lazuli Bunting (only the 3rd or 4th time we've had them), continuing Red Crossbills, Hepatic Tanager, and Pinyon, Steller's and Western Scrub-Jays. Here are some of the photos of the scarlet lobelia's and Eva enjoying the outdoors:

On the way back to Flagstaff I briefly stopped at the wastewater ponds near the golf course in Holbrook. Unfortunately, I forgot to wear jeans so I got eaten alive by the clouds of mosquitoes there (the reason my stay was short there). Even so, I had some good birds with the turn-over rate typical of migration there. Highlights included flyover flocks of ~50 White-faced Ibises (in two groups) and 5 Greater White-fronted Geese at dusk, a single Willow Flycatcher (yeah WIFL's!), Least and Baird's Sandpipers, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, and 10 lingering Common Nighthawks (this species should be heading south pretty soon).

Back to the grind of schoolwork, TA-ing 3 biology labs, and working on my thesis!