The Bird Whisperer: Silver Creek: A Tale of Two Habitats

Back at the end of May I was over in Navajo County to conduct a couple of volunteer riparian bird surveys for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. On May 25, 2011, my mom came along with me to do a stretch of Silver Creek 5+ miles south of Woodruff (upstream from Silver Creek's confluence with the Little Colorado River, about 20 miles southeast of Holbrook). The habitat here is a dense mixture of native and exotic tree/shrub species, dominated by tamarisk (Tamarix sp.), boxelder (Acer negundo), Arizona walnut (Juglans major), coyote willow (Salix exigua), and New Mexico olive (Forestiera neomexicana) in a steep rocky canyon surrounded by rangeland and scattered junipers. Conducting the survey was challenging, bushwhacking through and crawling under the dense shrubbery. We joked that it was like playing "nightcrawlers", the game described by Charlie in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. My mom definitely got a feel for the type of vegetation we had to move through on the field job I was on for the two previous summers in southern Nevada (yeah tamarisk!). What was also challenging was finding access to the different vegetation waypoints on our plot. For the last couple of points we had to navigate the steep hillsides to find a way back down to the riparian vegetation along the creek after being forced to go above the drainage when we encountered sheer, vertical cliffs along one side of the creek (we could not ford the creek due to its depth, unless we swam across it). In this plot bird highlights included several territorial Yellow-breasted Chats, which are a rare and local breeder in drainages above the Mogollon Rim in Navajo County (the breeding bird atlas did not show them here, just along East Clear and Chevelon Creeks off to the west). As far as nesting activity, we found active nests of two female Black-chinned Hummingbirds, an abandoned Common Raven nest on a cliff ledge with two dead nestlings (almost fully-developed plumage), and one Mourning Dove nest with eggs just north of the plot. Despite the altered hydrology evidenced by the density of exotic tamarisks here, we were impressed to find several recent beaver dams along the creek (at least one keystone species still calls this creek home). Here is one example photo of the plot (more below in the rest of the post):

Then, on May 27th we visited the second plot I was to survey along Silver Creek, this time much further upstream within the community of Silver Creek next to White Mountain Lake (not too far northeast of Show Low). Here we were shocked to find riparian vegetation dominated by sedges and rushes with scattered coyote willows and false indigo. The surrounding habitat was mainly junipers, which came down to the edge of the sedges along the creek, with some Fremont barberries on the rockier hillsides. The slopes themselves were much more moderate going down to the creek, which itself was a babbling brook rather than the muddy wide channel found up by Woodruff on the plot we did two days prior. It's amazing what geography, disrupted hydrology from damming, and invasive vegetation can do to riparian habitat along a single drainage! Here is a representative shot of this plot for comparison:

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Here are some more photos from the first plot south of Woodruff:

Bushwhacking & crawling through the habitat::

Beaver dam up-close:

Black-chinned Hummingbird nest, with two eggs (slightly larger than tic-tac's):

Some land-snails called Oreohelix houghi, which we learned the name of after a birder we know identified them and asked if we were related to the person whom the species is named after. Probably a different Hough, but then again we haven't looked at our ancestry much.

Cliff Swallow nests (mostly old); we found active nests just north of the plot:

Ancient petroglyphs on cliff just above the creek. It's always intriguing trying to figure out what animals they were depicting with these drawings. The Mogollon people are known from sites to the south, so these may have been left by them (although the Sinagua also inhabited the Colorado Plateau, but most of their known sites are from the Flagstaff region). Cool petroglyphs anyhow: