Rites of Spring: Lesser Prairie Chicken

Alan, our friend Jim Shiflett, and I have journeyed to southeastern New Mexico near the Texas border to find Lesser Prairie Chickens on their lekking grounds. After checking the lek in daylight, we retreat about a mile and camp on BLM land. The prairie chickens dance at dawn and into the morning, so we'll need to arrive before daybreak to avoid disturbing them.

Jim sets up his tent in a swale between dunes in this intriguing habitat. Rolling sand dunes envelop the Shinnery Oak so that only the topmost branchlets emerge from the sand, leaf out, and bear acorns. The rest of the tree is buried in sand! Today the brown drifts of last season's oak leaves catch in the lee of the dunes. Newly unfolding leaves are velvety; they glow in violet and soft green. Cassin's Sparrows sing in display flight, and a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher adorns an oak.

As night falls, rainclouds on the horizon pulse with lightning, while below them twinkles a medley of red lights from an oilfield. Beneath the prairie chickens' thrumming feet are the oil reserves of the Permian Basin.

Before dawn we ease into place, using our car as a blind. Soon we hear the coos and soft clucks of the assembling birds, and dawn reveals about a dozen dancing males and a single female, eyeing the lot, deciding which is the most fit father. They occasionally cast a glance in our direction, but are mostly intent on their urgent spring ritual.

Lesser Prairie Chicken at his lek (Photo by Narca)

If you would like to see prairie chickens on their booming grounds, a very good option is to participate in the annual April High Plains Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival at Milnesand, NM. Local ranchers provide food to participants and open their properties to field trips. It's possible to arrange a room at some of the ranches or to camp in Milnesand. Here's the link:

http://www.wildlife.state.nm.us/recreation/prairie_ckn/Festival.html

Be sure to sign up early, because the festival sells out quickly!

Short-tailed Hawks

Last month saw so few postings because I was deep in a manuscript on the first nest of Short-tailed Hawk found in the western US. In May 2007, Helen and Noel Snyder found the nest high in the Chiricahua Mountains, and several of us took turns spending days in a tower blind, observing the hawks' behavior and detailing their nesting biology. Noel was the paper's senior author, and just yesterday it went into the mail to Western Birds, a fine regional journal focused on field ornithology. Now... freedom!

During my sojourn in the blind, the female Short-tail confronted an Apache Fox Squirrel which was climbing the nest tree. When the squirrel was about 80 feet above the ground, the hawk slammed into it several times, driving it leaping down the tree. Here is a drawing that depicts the rout!

Short-tailed Hawk Defends Her Nest

(Pen and ink by Narca)

Bring on the Poppies!

The El Niño storms of winter soaked the desert southwest, and now we're seeing the results: native Mexican Gold Poppies cloak the lower slopes of the Chiricahuas and Peloncillos, and flood the San Simon Valley in a golden tide.

Mexican Gold Poppies

I'm off today to guide my second tour of the spring to Big Bend National Park (this one for World Wildlife Fund), and no doubt by the time I return, many other blooms will brighten these hills!

Sunburst: Mexican Gold Poppies (Photos by Narca)

Fond of Swallows

Yesterday the first Tree Swallows of the season were arriving in the Animas Valley, glistening with deep blue and bright white as they homed in on the waters of the cienaga. Tree Swallows are usually the first of their clan to arrive in spring, en route to their northerly breeding grounds.

A friend in Alaska put out nest boxes for them at his house, partly just to enjoy their presence and partly for their prowess in catching mosquitoes. Each year when the young Tree Swallows fledged and the families departed for milder climes, he would notice a big uptick in the number of mosquitoes around his house.

Barn Swallows on the Diamond A (Photo by Narca)

Swallows belong to a cosmopolitan family, gracing every continent except Antarctica. Many sport brilliant colors, and some have long tail streamers to aid their aerial adroitness. Journey up the rivers of the Amazon Basin and you'll find swallows. Land at an airport in Australia, and you are likely to be greeted by their Welcome Swallow. Isn't that a great name?

Swallow migration has always fascinated me. As strong fliers, they often migrate by day, feeding on aerial insects as they go. Once, about October, I was guiding a World Wildlife Fund tour in the cerrado of central Brazil, a region dominated by giant termite mounds. The rains had begun about two weeks earlier. On our first day, we saw only one or two swallows, and I was puzzled by their absence. Usually in the Brazilian spring, hundreds of swallows and martins (their larger cousins) are swooping over the shrubby grasslands of the cerrado. That night it rained again, and by morning winged termites were emerging in the millions. And overhead the morning sky was dark with thousands of Cliff Swallows, which had arrived overnight, timing their appearance to match perfectly the emergence of this bounty of food.

Here in the States, seven species of swallows, plus the Purple Martin, breed regularly. The most local of those is the Cave Swallow. Here's a tip for finding it in West Texas: take the frontage roads off I-10, and check the highway underpasses for the swallows' mud nests. Sometimes the nests of Cave Swallows will be mixed in with those of Cliff Swallows, and sometimes you'll find a small, pure colony of Caves.

Barn Swallow detail from Self Portrait as Garden

The Diamond Path

This winter we've had plenty of occasions to celebrate rain in the Southwest. Yesterday another storm swept through the Chiricahua Mountains, and today the path I walked was diamond-strewn with ice crystals, glittering in the early sunlight.

We used to get a similar effect at San Jacinto Wildlife Area in southern California: there, the rains would wash millions of tiny flakes of pyrite from the rocks and soil, and deposit them in long golden rivulets, so that the path glimmered in gold. The effect was almost as ephemeral as this dawn's ice crystals. Soon the ground would dry and the winds would pick up the tiny, lightweight flakes and broadcast them across the hills. Then only a very practiced eye could discern, in the right light, the golden sheen on the hillsides.

Are there parallels here, in learning to discern the sparkling sheen on the more symbolic paths of our lives?

The road taken (Photo by Narca)

Creative Problem Solving in Passer domesticus

OK. Say you're a young female House Sparrow, living at the wind-blown edge of Lordsburg, Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Tumbleweed country... the sort of gritty, lonesome place evoked by a distant train whistle at night. And you're confronted with a problem: specifically, you need a good piece of real estate for building your dream nest.

Ideally, what amenities are you looking for?

√ Protection from predators, such as Ringtails and free-roaming cats
√ People coming and going to discourage the shyer raptors
√ A roof that protects the nest from wind, sleet, rain, and hot sun
√ A little elevation, for the view
√ Dining room immediately below, in the form of a fast-food parking lot
√ Warmer at night than your average shrub
√ Lights at night to attract bugs
√ In the wee hours, the soothing sounds of the aforementioned train whistle and passing rumble of Amtrak
√ Price is right
√ And, along with everything else, love plays a prominent role

Line points to House Sparrow at nest (Photo by Narca)

It's possible that Love's has not applied for a permit for an Additional Dwelling Unit, and if any county in the US cares, that would be Hidalgo County... so mum's the word!

Ciénaga

Ciénaga: cien aguas, one hundred waters.

A jewel of a cienaga, among New Mexico's finest, may be found on one of the big private ranches in the Animas Valley. The cienaga's waters originate in the Peloncillo Mountains just to the west and flow underground through the alluvium until just here, where an impervious layer of clay brings the water to the surface. Then a wide flood of water flows gently through the grasses, some of it captured in ponds which were dug by ranchers a half-century ago, some of it revitalizing Animas Creek and soaking the valley floor.

Our region has been bone-dry since the failure of the 2009 monsoon, and the effects of drought are obvious: "no grass seed" translates into almost no grassland sparrows, Horned Larks, Chestnut-collared Longspurs or mice. "No prey base" translates into almost no Northern Harriers, falcons, or accipiters. Even the ponds of the cienaga, which store water through most years, have been mostly dry––until now!

Alan and I take a long day's drive through the Animas Valley and up Geronimo Trail to Douglas. The valley stretches perhaps 40 miles through New Mexico's bootheel, then fades to the distant south, reaching deep into Mexico. Today the valley seems virtually bird-free, except for Loggerhead Shrikes and Red-tailed Hawks––how do they manage?––until we reach Clanton Cienaga.

Here's our first clue to what lies ahead: near ranch headquarters, Animas Creek is flowing across the county road. The cienaga, fed by this winter's heavy rain, is renewed. We ford the creek, then find that the lowest pond is brimful of water for the first time in years. Ring-necked Ducks have returned for the winter. A pair of alert Mexican Ducks suspects our motives, but doesn't flush as our car eases past.

Waters of Clanton Cienaga (Photo by Narca)

In another mile, we see the cienaga in something like its original form: before us stretches a wide flood of shallow waters, flowing gently through the grasses and the brown skeletons of a past year's sunflowers. And here the birds congregate. American Robins bathe. In a sudden blaze of blue, dozens of Mountain and Western Bluebirds forage in the wet grasses. Interestingly, the two bluebird species stay apart. The Mountains are in the slightly more open valley floor, while only a hundred yards away, the Westerns forage in the slightly more wooded stretch.

Life returns with the waters.