Page Springs

Last weekend I took advantage of the unusually gorgeous weather and headed down to Page Springs south of Sedona for birding. Page Springs is a tiny community with two fish hatcheries (named Page Springs and Bubbling Ponds) that are on either side of Oak Creek. Both hatcheries have associated trails that have been maintained as part of the Important Bird Area (IBA) program initiated by the National Audubon Society and other organizations. The high temperature was about 70 degrees and there was no wind, which made for beautiful weather to walk around in. The birds were noticing the warm temperatures too, with the Bewick's Wrens and Anna's Hummingbirds already breaking into full song. The hummingbirds were especially nice to hear, since there were lots of reports of their kind dying from the recent cold snap. At least some ones were tough enough to survive it. Other highlights included the Common Black-Hawk that had been reported all winter there (this is very rare, since pretty much all of their species migrates south of the border in winter) and a photogenic Green Heron. Here are some shots:

Green Heron:

Common Black-Hawk:

Great Blue Herons:

Northern Cardinal:

Ring-necked Ducks and Canvasbacks:

Belted Kingfisher:

In one of the flocks of Mallards, I found one bird that appeared to be a hybrid between the northern Mallard subspecies and the Mexican form. Most birds showing Mexican Mallard traits that have shown up in the U.S. are hybrids/intergrades. Besides this bird at Page Springs, I've seen them mostly in the southern half of the state (e.g. Gilbert Water Ranch), although I've had them as far north as Holbrook and Show Low. This bird shows the silvery gray patch on the wings, dark brown body, and yellow bill of the Mexican Mallard, but the curled up tail feathers of the northern Mallard:

Besides the birds, I find myself looking at plants just as much. Page Springs has a nice variety of riparian, desert, and chaparral flora around the fish hatcheries and along Oak Creek. At the Page Springs hatchery there is even a nice grove of Arizona cypresses (Cupressus arizonica), which are much more common further southeast in the state (along the Mogollon Rim, in the Mazatzal Mountains, and in the "sky island" mountain ranges in southeastern AZ). They give off a distinct, sweet musty odor which always reminds me of the Chiricahua Mountains. On this day at Page Springs I ate lunch under the trees imagining I was down in South Fork.

Another plant I noticed while I was here was the sugar sumac (Rhus ovata) which grows in a narrow band of chaparral and upper Sonoran desert vegetation communities in AZ. The ones at the Page Springs hatchery look to have been planted, but where they normally occur they associate with scrub oaks and manzanita. Some were beginning to open their flower buds (or getting ready to). Their leaves are very large in comparison to other sumacs in the state and have a drooping shape to them. The leaves are very waxy and smooth too:

Rim Country (fossils, petroglyphs, birds, and scenery)

The following photos are from areas below and above the Mogollon Rim from trips during the last couple of months (descriptions before each set of photos). To start it off, here is an awesome photo my dad took of a sunrise back in December at my family's place in Heber:

This past week my parents went out to Jacques Marsh in Pinetop-Lakeside to look for a Tundra Swan that had been reported there. They lucked out and my dad was able to get a few photos of it. This was a new species for them and is a rare winter visitor to the region (I've only seen it twice so far over the years: two birds at Lake Mary near Flagstaff and one at Nutrioso Lake in the White Mountains). Here's their bird:

Snow along Christopher Creek near the campground, below the Mogollon Rim:

At Christopher Creek campground, the snow had melted enough in some spots to look for fossils. It's funny that in the few decades my family has been coming here, we had never noticed the fossils until a few months ago. Now we're finding them everywhere. Here is a fossil my mom discovered that, after looking at some fossil books, we think is a "rudist" (a primitive, extinct mollusk that lived in the somewhere between the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, 65-200 million years ago):

Some other fossils we found, which may include graptolites (Phylum Hemichordata), anemones/corals (Phylum Cnidaria), crinoids (Phylum Echinodermata), and possibly a cephalopod (Phylum Mollusca). However, these are just guesses:

Back in January my mom and I went out to the Little Colorado River near Woodruff (~10 miles southeast of Holbrook) to search for a pair of Sandhill Cranes that had been reported there. While we had no luck with those birds, we did see some cool scenery along the river canyon, some petroglyphs, and lots of petrified wood. It's intriguing trying to figure out what these ancient drawings are depicting:

Here are a few shots of the canyon walls. In the first picture the plant in the foreground is of the Ephedra genus which belongs to the group of plants called "gymnosperms", which also includes the conifers, cycads, and ginkgo. Until recently, ephedra was used in medicines until negative health effects were being observed. The plant lacks leaves, but has the ability to photosynthesize through chlorophyll pigments contained in the stems:

Before the game on Superbowl Sunday, we went down for a short hike along a tributary of Tonto Creek below the Rim. In one patch of snow/ice we found some fallen bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum) and Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) leaves that had sunken into the snow as it was melting, leaving the shape of the leaf around it in the snow:

Arizona sycamore (Platanus wrightii) leaf glowing in the sunlight. These leaves are huge (sometimes larger than a dinner plate):

It was surprising to see that some of the arroyo willows (Salix lasiolepis) were starting to break bud with some of the catkins appearing. Despite the warmer temperatures that had been occurring around that time, it was still getting pretty damn cold at night (20's or teens). The fatter buds on this plant suggest it is an arroyo willow instead of similar species.

One of my favorite oak trees along Tonto Creek, perched atop a large boulder. The oak is one of the evergreen species, either Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica) or netleaf oak (Q. rugosa). Both species occur in that stretch and having not looked up close at this particular individual, I'm not sure which. An awesome tree nonetheless (nevermind the nerd talk):

A couple more Tonto Creek area shots:

At my family's place in Heber, we have been seeing an irruption of Pine Siskins in the yard, usually ranging from 75-150 individuals at any given time. Today during the snow storm my parents said they had an enormous swarm of 250-300 siskins hitting the feeders at once! Here is a photo I took a while ago showing some foraging below the thistle sock feeders: