Babs' Birding Experiences : Lower Salt River Recreation Area, Maricopa County, AZ

Friday, January 12, 2018
Not one of my usual stops, I drove into the Goldfield Recreation Area this morning to see what birds might be lurking there. The sun was rising on the hillsides so it felt chlly to me at 46°F at 7:45 a.m.

Birds were quiet, but some were perched up on distant saguaro (HARRIS'S HAWK) and on bare limbs of tall cottonwoods closer to the river. LADDER-BACKED WOODPECKER was drilling into the limb and a solitary WESTERN BLUEBIRD was soaking up some sun.

For me, the main draw of the less-accessible Goldfield is lack of human traffic and always some surprising bird or two. In two hours of birding, I saw a total of four people.

Some birds were expected.

PHAINOPEPLA (male)

PHAINOPEPLA (female)

A common resident of the southwest, it winters in the Sonoran Desert extending to several of our neighboring states. It's believed the PHAINOPEPLA have two breeding seasons (early spring in the Sonoran Desert; late spring at higher elevations). With usual fly-catcher behavior, it can often be found perching on top of trees, occasionally without limbs hiding it.
If you're ever in a mesquite bosque and see a lot of mistletoe clumps, looks for this bird. It's my understanding that it is one of the few birds than can digest mistletoe berries. Finding an open nest of PHAINOPEPLA is rare since nesting often occurs in or close to these dense clumps of mistletoe making a nest diffcult to find.

GREAT-TAILED GRACKLE

While we might shrug off these very common southwestern and Great Plains' birds, not everyone in the country has the opportunity to see them. Our big-voiced and social GREAT-TAILED GRACKLE can be celebrated for cleaning up food remnants in picnic areas, parking lots, and dumsters. Its habitat extends to agricultural lands, pastures, scrub prairies, citrus groves, golf courses and in reeds along fresh-water marshes. It is one of three grackles in the USA. In Arizona, it's rare to find either Common Grackle or a Boat-tailed Grackle.
Common Grackle is abundant east of the Rockies and is often called the "purple grackle" due to its sun-reflected radiance. Boat-tailed Grackle is a coastal bird and can be found along some inland waterways as well.

Depending on where you live, you're likely to come in contact with one of these grackles.

In the distance, I spotted a BALD EAGLE far across the river, preening.

By camera, I was able to pull it in enough to identify it as a 4-year bird.

Note the white remaining on its tail and wings. Not quite a fully mature BALD EAGLE, but much
farther along than most three-year BAEAs I've seen. Actually, this if my first "four-year" Bald Eagle.

As expected along the river, I found a KILLDEER.

KILLDEER

Several pleasant surprises awaited me as I walked back - not along the river, but through the mesquite trees. A TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE was perched up looking totally brown/gray on a bare limb. Perfect for photos, I took many but my body wasn't fully balanced on the rocky desert floor and all the shots were blurry. Bummer.

Had better luck with the WESTERN BLUEBIRDS.