The Bird Whisperer: September: flashes before my eyes

Lots happened back in September, which is part of the reason it's taken me this long to post about it all on this blog. One cool occurrence was on Sept. 6th while walking back to my house down Switzer Canyon Rd. in Flagstaff. A half hour before Samantha Dorr and I had just talked birds and specifically about the male Hooded Warbler she had found at NAU a few years ago, and I had said how I would like to see one (I had only seen two females before). Well, this day I decided to not listen to my iPod while walking back home. Coming along the stretch of guardrail on Switzer Canyon with lots of Siberian elms and a couple patches of boxelders, I began to hear chipping. I started pishing to see if I could draw in the birds within 'naked eye' range since I was without binoculars. Suddenly a couple of Nashville Warblers came within a couple of feet of me and then I saw a flash of black and yellow about 8-10 ft away: a HOODED WARBLER!!! It turned out to be a female, but the plumage was so stunning that at first I thought it was a male (apparently some females can have plumage approximating a male). Weird bird karma going on that day! The bird stayed at this spot through October 16th, routinely coming back to the same patch of boxelders there. My guess is that it either arrived there in migration and stayed while it was finishing its molting process, or it over-summered here and this was its little home range.

September 12th literally started off with a bang. I was jolted awake by the deafening crack of thunder from a lightning bolt that must have come down right next to our house. It sounded like a gunshot had gone off by my ears, and they rang for minutes afterwards. I felt my heart pounding out of my chest and I was feeling myself over initially wondering if I had been hit by the bolt. This is the closest to a near-death experience I have had so far. My house-mates were also woken up by the thunder crack. I then looked out the blinds and saw that the clouds had this creepy greenish hue to them, which I had heard was associated with storms that spurred funnel clouds. Sure enough when I turned on the Weather Channel there was a warning stating that this storm was capable of producing tornados. Luckily the storm was fast moving and heading off to the northeast. Soon after the hail came down furiously, but only marble sized. In other parts of Flagstaff the hail ranged as large as golf ball-sized and had shredded pretty much all of the deciduous trees/shrubs in town, leaves covering the streets. These storms produced this type of weather across northern Arizona, with my parents reporting heavy hail with uber-dark clouds in Snowflake later that week. The lightning around Flagstaff was amazing the whole week, as well.

On Sept. 22nd I decided to skip the department seminar and go birding out at Lake Mary, Mormon Lake, and Ashurst Lake to celebrate my 25th birthday. I capped it off by getting Oregano's and a large mint-chocalate cake from Fry's with vanilla ice cream. I didn't see anything rare while out birding, but it was nice to be outside and enjoy the warm weather. A few days later my mom and I went birding in Holbrook, Ganado, St. Johns, and Concho with my new digital camera that my parents and I pitched in on for my birthday.

Here are photos of all these events that flashed before my eyes that month:

Hooded Warbler:

Hail at our house on the morning of Sept. 12th:

Back on Sept. 5th while having a BBQ at our house, we discovered an orb weaver spider downstairs. Apparently they're harmless to humans (at least not venomous), but still creepy: