Babs' Birding Experiences : A Birding Look at Tempe Town Lake and Marsh, Maricopa County, AZ

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

With a group of birders from my community, I was definitely surprised to see how much progress had been made on the concrete trail that led from Tempe Town Lake to its Marsh in the past two years of Covid-19 restrictions on personal contact.

The buoy line seems to no longer exist in the Lake, but many cormorants were perched near the point where the lake flows into marshland. Our visit, in photos, below:

Rare for me to catch a GREAT BLUE HERON in flight.

Quite distant, this large grebe is definitely a WESTERN GREBE. Do you know why?

Location of its eye and color of its bill.

Closer to shore, several birds had us looking this way, then that

BELTED KINGFISHER

Sharing the same shrubby tree with the kingfisher was a GREEN HERON, my "spark" bird, so-called as it was the bird that got me interested in naming the birds I saw.

Perched in a tree along the sidewalk, on the grassy side, was a LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE.

The LOSH's stubby bill is hooked at its end, making this a predator songbird. They do eat insects but also collect small lizards, rodents, and small birds. After a very successful day of foraging, you might find them storing their catch on a barbed wire. We're seeing fewer and fewer of this species -- possibly due to loss of habitat. (Back to that matter of fields becoming housing.)

Our local "sea eagle" cannot compare to the Sea Eagle that flew down from the far north to Maine this month. Still, who doesn't like to watch an OSPREY sail overhead, hover...then strike for its prey in a lake or stream?

[The massive STELLER'S SEA EAGLE arrived in Bangor, Maine earlier this month, from Siberia. The largest seagull in the world, it has a wingspan surpassing 6.6 feet and can weigh up to 20 pounds. In Maine, it reportedly stole a duck from a Bald Eagle.]

While our time at the Marsh end of the Lake was full of birds, the sky grew more overcast and photos were few.