Celebrating Our Local CBCs

This year, again, Alan and I joined the national ritual of Christmas Bird Counts, once more participating in the back-to-back counts for Portal, Arizona, and the Peloncillo Mountains, New Mexico. The weather couldn't have been finer, with temperatures rising into the high 60s and low 70s.

The Portal count, coordinated by Jackie Lewis, was on Saturday. We hiked out our door and up to the high base of Portal Peak, a big bowl full of old-growth Arizona Madrone trees. Away from the canyon bottoms, much of our territory burned last May during the Horseshoe Two fire. Some regrowth has begun, but a lot of it still looks like the Desolation of Smaug.

Trudging through the Desolation, heading for that ribbon of green at the foot of Portal Peak (All photos except oriole by Narca)

Happily, many of the big madrones had weathered last year's drought, freeze and fire, although only a few still bore fruit this day.

An ancient Arizona Madrone, partly burned out, is sprouting new branches. Go, Life!

Junipers are way off in their cycle! We saw almost no berries (and a corresponding lack of berry-eaters like Sage Thrashers and Phainopeplas), and many junipers were peaking in their pollen production! Who ever heard of juniper pollen at the end of December?? Late February is more normal. Clouds of orange pollen were wafting on light breezes, creating a very sneezy CBC. Come on, hay fever in December?

This especially bright Say's Phoebe was flycatching within the Desolation.

The Vesper Sparrows surprised me by being in the burned area, higher on the mountain than they usually winter.

Several friends joined us––Skip from Maine, Linda from Idaho, Brad from Tucson––and here is Brad's photo of a highlight for our territory, an adult male Scott's Oriole, in all his finery. We've never before recorded one in our yard in December! I don't know whether Mr Scott is very late, or very early.

Scott's Oriole near Portal, AZ (Photo by Brad Tatham)

Sunday's Peloncillo count, coordinated by Nick Pederson, includes the north end of the Animas Valley, where the Diamond A Ranch (formerly Gray Ranch) allows entry for the CBC counters. Our territory was south of Dunagan's Crossing, from the hackberries through Middle Well, for those who know this valley. This part of the ranch had obviously endured a dry summer, and bird numbers were very low. (Other parts of the count circle fared better.)

The Peloncillo count has always shown boom-and-bust cycles, in synchrony with rain and drought. Once in a span of two years, we went from having the all-time national high for Brewer's Sparrows to zero! Such huge fluctuations emphasize why studies of wildlife in desert regions must be long-term to be truly relevant.

This cryptic Great Horned Owl was roosting in an old hackberry tree. He's hoping we don't see him!

Great Horned Owl in the Animas Valley, New Mexico

The Lark Buntings were also fun, as they picked through horse droppings in search of goodies. This male shows a trace of his classy black breeding dress around his bill.

Lark Bunting looking for a snack

Progress on Horseshoe 2 Fire

[If you've noticed that a couple of my most recent posts have disappeared, it is because Google's blogging platform was compromised, and has been out of commission for about a day. I'm hoping that the missing posts will reappear soon.]

Last night the most obvious (and spectacular) development in the Horseshoe Two fire happened along the south part of the eastern perimeter, where crews burned out land between Owl Butte Road and the oncoming fire. (Local residents who were blanketed in smoke, take heart: there was a bonus in addition to protection. Your road, at least, is now graded!) Results were excellent, and the eastern and northern areas of the fire perimeter are no longer considered dangerous. Today teams will be mopping up there, patrolling and extinguishing hot spots.

Alicia and Tom Davidson, and their mini-horses, live in the back-burned area. They reported a frightening night of fire, but also found the firefighters to be very professional and skilled, to the extent that they were even able to sleep once everything was underway.

A map of the Horseshoe 2 Fire on May 13, showing how it dwarfs and has curled around last year's Horseshoe Fire.

The most active and most worrisome corner continues to be in the southwest: holding it is key to holding the fire, and it is now the number one priority. Part of that corner (upper South Fork) fronts against the 1994 Rattlesnake burn, and a combination of the old burn and high cliffs are holding that edge rather well. But the fire is trying to spread south and west from the old burn, in country that is exceedingly difficult to enter. Today while the wind is calm and air support can be used, the fire team is dropping water there to slow the spread. You can see the critical points on this map.

Detail of fire map on May 13, 2011

Another worry is the finger of fire reaching into upper South Fork (indicated on the map above, "Major effort here too"). A crew hiked into South Fork yesterday to reconnoiter, and today they will anchor a line between two cliffs to attempt to stop that advance.

Along Horseshoe Canyon Road, crews will continue to build fire lines today and to prepare for burning from the road and fire lines, back to the spreading fire, to contain it there at the southern perimeter.

Up in the northwest, fire is slowly backing down into Cave Creek Canyon at Cathedral Rock, but it has not yet reached the point where it can be dealt with directly.

As for the numbers, 14,700 acres are estimated to have burned so far, and containment stands at 15%. 602 people have now come to join the effort. Today in the air attack, two heavy water tankers are on loan from Ft. Huachuca. In addition, 2 light, 2 medium and 3 heavy helicopters are working.

Bill Edwards, USFS District Ranger, addresses the firefighters 

(Photos by Narca)

Bill Edwards, the Douglas District Ranger for the Coronado National Forest, talked to the fire crews at this morning's briefing about the biological value of what they are fighting to save. Initially the focus was on saving homes and the village of Portal, as the greatest threat loomed there. Now that the public is relatively safe, and the fire has entered deeper into the Chiricahuas, the focus has shifted to minimizing the damage that this fire could do to the rich biodiversity. Bill spoke to the firefighters of the biological significance of the Chiricahua Mountains, of the high density of nesting raptors here, of the rare plant and animal communities, "so that you will know what you are fighting for." That biodiversity is also a primary economic base for communities in southeast Arizona.

Fire is a natural element in the local ecology. What isn't natural is the frequency of unseasonal, human-caused, catastrophic fire we've been experiencing. I've been researching fire ecology and adaptations to fire, and want to get into that in a later post. But for now, one tidbit of information lightens my heart: Arizona Madrone is indeed fire-adapted. Many of the burned madrone trees should root-sprout after fire. So although we may have lost some magnificent old-growth madrones when the north face of Portal Peak (behind my home) burned a few days ago, at least some of them should survive. It may be a few years before they bear berries again, but eventually Portal Peak will once more have food in the autumn for trogons and Eared Quetzals. (It was here that we found the only Eared Quetzal to be recorded so far on a US Christmas Bird Count, back in the winter of 1999-2000.)

Thunderheads

This morning at the fire briefing in Portal, the new map for the Horseshoe Fire hadn't changed from the last one: the small amount of burning yesterday was in the interior of the fire.

Today a major topic at the fire briefing was the weather. Meteorologist Joe Harris boosted his estimate of our chance for rain to 60%, and indeed today the thunderheads have built and are rumbling. While we are all hoping for rain, the firefighters find our pre-monsoon weather to be dangerous too. Dry lightning is the norm, and everyone is very alert today both to new ignitions and for their own safety.

Have you ever been close to a lightning strike, when the air sizzles for an instant and the smell of ozone is suddenly strong? Several of us were birding in the Animas Valley a few years ago when that happened. Three of us immediately hit the ground. I'm not sure what had happened to the survival instincts of the other two, but that day they got lucky.

Thunderheads build over Portal Peak

(Photo by Narca)