Rufous-backed Robins Visit Portal!

My glimpse of an interesting bird at dusk was confirmed soon after when Dave Jasper called to tell us that he had just seen Rufous-backed Robins by the post office in Portal that morning.

Rufous-backed Robin in Arizona Sycamore

(Photos by Narca)

Normally at home further south in Mexico, Rufous-backs most often frequent dry deciduous forest. Their behavior and diet are similar to those of their cousin, the familiar American Robin, though they are often shyer than ours –– a trait you'd never guess by the way this Rufous-back cooperated!

You can just make out the warm rufous tones 

on this bird's back and wing coverts.

The streaks on the throat are stronger and extend farther down

 on Rufous-backs than on American Robins, 

and they sport no white marks around the eye.

Isn't Portal grand in the spring?!

Winter's Subtleties

Imagine: you're immersed in the early-winter splendor of the Chiricahua Mountains.

 Dawn light on the Chiricahua Mountains (Photos by Narca)

The air is brisk and glorious, and, hiking up South Fork, you settle into the depths and subtleties of the season...

into the drifts of sycamore leaves...

Light gleams from the seedheads of Cane Beardstem...

and native thistles...

and Deer Grass.

Streamside willows still hold a few leaves,

and the sycamore's bark takes on a subtle hue of green from chloroplasts.

The riot of nesting and migrating birds has passed, and now you find winter's companions:

Acorn Woodpeckers are busy among the pines and oaks,

Gambel's Quail enliven the mountains' feet,

and Spotted Towhees scratch in the underbrush.

In fact, Spotted Towhees are having a banner winter in the Chiricahuas. Regrowth from the big fire of 2011 must have reached a stage that offers towhees plenty of nesting cover, for we've never before seen them this numerous in winter.

Adult male Scott's Oriole

And... what is a Scott's Oriole doing, still coming daily to our hummingbird feeders?? He lasted through the November snowstorm and shows every sign of being a snowbird in reverse. There's nothing subtle about this bird's summer yellows!

Okay, who has guessed? New camera!

Immersion

Arizona Sycamore against an impossibly blue Arizona sky

(Photos by Narca)

Fall comes late to southern Arizona. Up north, trees are bare by now and shrouded in ice. Here Indian Summer has drifted into fall, and shifted bit by bit into chilly winter, yet any venture out-of-doors is still an immersion in color.

Richardson's Geranium in autumn dress

Consider Whitewater Draw in the Sulphur Springs Valley northwest of Douglas. Low afternoon light slants across the ponds where a Canvasback naps. Waves of Sandhill Cranes drift in, settling among thousands of their fellows in a dancing, clangorous multitude. Two dazzling Snow Geese catch the sun.

The land glows. We skirt the ponds with my brother. Suddenly a wheeling mass of Yellow-headed Blackbirds returns to their evening roost in the reeds. They announce their coming, loudly. A friend, Steve Laymon, once described the voice of a Yellow-headed Blackbird this way: imagine a Red-winged Blackbird being held under water.

Yellow-headed Blackbirds descend pell-mell to their evening roost.

These blackbirds are mostly males. The males and females tend to migrate separately. Once years ago, I saw a fallout of male Yellow-heads in the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, as night descended. They festooned every tree and telephone wire around us. Two weeks later I returned to Chihuahua, and that night a huge flock of female Yellow-heads descended on the city to roost. The males and females were following the same migratory path, but the males were going first, to set up their breeding territories in preparation for their mates' arrival.

A Merlin routs the panicked blackbirds, but soon they settle back in for the night. What form do their dreams take, I wonder? Spilt seed for foraging, safe harbor in the reeds, and––after the cold––the gurgling songs of spring?

Autumn Comes

What builds, what informs our sense of a place?

Fresh from yesterday's late-season rain, South Fork in the Chiricahua Mountains is entering autumn. Today I hike up the road, now inhabited by winter birds: the chittering small flocks of Chipping Sparrows, kinglets and titmice. The woodpeckers and sapsuckers are hammering industriously.

A Red-naped Sapsucker is back in his favorite winter tree.

(Photos by Narca)

A Mexican Jay hopes that a picnic is in his future.

A mob of Mexican Jays shadows me, swooping silently through the streamside cypress trees. Across the creek, a large mammal shuffles unseen uphill. Bear? A clumsy deer?

Arizona Sycamore (Platanus wrightii)

Sycamore leaves are rusting into a glorious orange against the deep blue Arizona sky, then dropping quietly into the creek.

The Lemonadeberry (Rhus trilobata) shades into coral and vermilion.

Silverleaf Oak (Quercus hypoleucoides)

A Silverleaf Oak's new leaves are red, too, but they still have a life of greening and photosynthesizing before they fall.

A late-blooming Red Columbine (Aquilegia triternata)

It is mid-day and the butterflies throng to the late-season flowers. Most are Variegated Fritillaries, but they are joined by a few blues, sulphurs, Arizona Sisters, ladies, Red-spotted Purples, one giant Two-tailed Swallowtail, and one of my favorites––a Red-bordered Satyr. Backlit in the sun, the oranges of the fritillaries and the sisters burn brilliantly in a visual echo of the autumn sycamore leaves.

An Arizona Sister (Adelpha eulalia) pauses on a sunlit cypress.

A Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia) nectars on an autumn composite.

All these details––all these particulars––tie us to the canyon, with its lichen-coated rhyolitic cliffs. These specific encounters create and deepen our felt sense of this place, in this particular time of its own long life. Autumn comes, after the big fire, after the healing rains. And here we are. Rugged Chiricahua hoodoos. Gallery forest of sycamore and cypress, sheltering life, winding between the high cliffs.

Noticing

Another El Niño storm has blessed early February. I'm out of the house, to recall from Oregon days the delights of walking in the rain. Most of the storm has passed, and only a light mist still falls. Cave Creek is roaring. Clouds alternately hide and reveal the highest cliffs.

Low clouds in Cave Creek Canyon (Photo by Narca)

The wet bark of trees has a different look––how intensely green is the Arizona Sycamore bark! The deepest green looks like a new layer of moss or algae from the recent wet spell, but the more general greenish tinge suggests something else––chloroplasts in the bark. I've looked at those green chloroplasts before, when the trees were dry and the colors paler, without really noticing.

This tree may be like the Gumbo-Limbo of tropical dry forests, which exposes its green bark when it is leafless, and is able to photosynthesize––to make food––to some degree throughout the leafless months. It's never completely dormant that way, and gains the advantage of nourishing itself through the lean times. Both of the tree species have peeling bark, too, which sloughs off any epiphytes like lichens that try to gain a toehold on the trunk and branches. That peeling also exposes the underlying chloroplasts. (The photo below hasn't been altered in any way––it is really that green!)

Are sycamores greener in winter? Have you noticed?

Wet sycamore bark (Photo by Narca)

Winter Walk in South Fork

The beauty of the South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon never fails to enchant those who stray into it. Most know it in spring when neotropical migrants pour through the canyon corridors, or in summer, when the croaks of Elegant Trogons echo off the burnt orange cliffs, overlain with lime-green lichens.

Arizona Sycamores in South Fork (Photo by Narca)

Now it's winter, and peacefulness lies as deep as the drifts of sycamore leaves.

I often hike up the South Fork road with friends, usually Peg or Rose Ann, but some days when the call of the canyon is especially strong, I go alone, quietly. That's when a Black Bear is more likely to amble across the dirt road, oblivious to a hiker. That's when I'm more likely to tune into the small flocks of confiding Yellow-eyed Juncos that forage unobtrusively at the road's edge.

Today sparkles, after last night's mix of rain and light snow. The luminous cliffs glow intensely orange against the skyblue. Flocks of ubiquitous Mexican Jays probe into crevices and under leaves. An Arizona Woodpecker taps softly in the oaks.

The cliffs of South Fork (Photo by Narca)

Today a troop of Coatis cavorts in the creek bed and noses through the drifts of fallen, rusty-gold leaves. Females and young gather in troops like this one. The males (like this big guy who visited our house last month) are solitary. In Costa Rica, people used to think that there were two species of Coatimundi––those that lived in groups, and those who were solitary, the "Lonely Coati."

A lone male Coati (Photo by Narca)

When our own quiet matches the forest's quiet, we find its life.