Flocking to Verde Valley

WHAT MAKES THE VERDE VALLEY SUCH A TREASURE TROVE OF BIRDS? IN THE LANGUAGE OF BIRD REAL ESTATE, LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.

Grace's warbler is probing the pine needles for insects, and that red crossbill over there is prying open pine cones to eat their seeds.

Our group continues around the pond, and Romig answers the man from Wyoming: "About the olive warbler, they do breed here on Mingus Mountain, so we have a pretty good chance ." Romig pauses when he hears a "peeta-peeta-peeta" song from a few yards down the trail. "Listen, there it is!"

We surge forward, the expert birders helping the newbies to find the 5.25-inch-long creature amid the arboreal tangle. "Look for the coppery head," someone suggests. Soon recognition lights up many faces. "That's a 'life bird' for me," says the grinning Wyoming man, referring to his lifetime list of the bird species he's seen. "That's the bird I hoped for when I signed up for this festival." Romig agrees that the olive warbler is a specialty of central Arizona's pine-clad mountains.

By noon, we've scouted several Mingus trails and found 73 species, among them 10 warblers, including yellow-rumped, Townsend's, black-throated gray and Virginia's; gray, dusky and Hammond's fly-catchers; a Western wood-peewee and a brown creeper; three nuthatch species; a plumbeous vireo and a Brewer's sparrow; a Northern pygmy-owl and the vibrant Western tanager.

Saturday morning, at a half-hour past dawn, we are 15 miles northeast of yesterday's warbler pond, at an eleva-tion 4,000 feet lower. A riparian aroma tick-les our noses, and today's natural sound track could be titled "Duet for Oriole and Gila Woodpecker." I'm leading a handful of festivalgoers along the Verde River in Cottonwood's Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Several field trips took bird-watchers out today-by canoe and by train, to Tavasci Marsh, around Sedona and Camp Verde, even north to the Grand Canyon to see California condors. My walk may sound less glamorous, but I know from years past that we can expect to spot rarities of our own.

The ecosystem here differs drastically from yesterday's. Fremont cottonwoods and elegant Arizona sycamores tower over our path, while Goodding willows and other streamside vegetation crowd the riverbanks on our right. Grasslands and a fishing lagoon border our left, and we pass through mesquite thickets here and there.

"Look, a cardinal!" calls a ponytailed teen as a brilliant red bird alights nearby. I cau-tion her, “Look more closely—I’m not see-ing a big crest.” The girl looks confused.

“We do have Northern cardinals here year-round,” I assure her. “And just like them, the bird you’re seeing has reached the northern limit of its breeding range.” Still, the identity stymies her.

An experienced birder from Texas has held his silence, but finally he says, “Male summer tanager.” “Right!” I confirm. “That yellow bird that just landed to the right of him is his mate.” The sun spotlights their contrasting breeding plumage.

“What do you mean by ‘northern limit’?” a woman asks.

“Let’s say I’m that tanager, and my wife and I spent the winter in sunny Mexico. We live it up on fruits and insects until it starts to get hot down there, and then we start thinking about the spring insects hatching in Arizona. We head north, following Arizona rivers—the San Pedro, Gila, Salt and Verde. We prefer riparian bed and breakfasts, so you won’t find us on those high chilly mountain forests that our cousin, the hepatic tanager, travels to.

“When we get to the Verde Valley, I see this lofty ribbon of red sandstone to the north, split by canyons. It’s the Mogollon Rim—the place where Arizona stairsteps up about 1,000 feet to the Colorado Plateau. And we stop to raise our family because I know we won't find our kind of room and board on top of that rim.

Our birding group continues along the Verde River Green-way Trail, stopping to identify a cordilleran flycatcher, to watch violet-green and northern rough-winged swallows zoom by, to admire hooded and Bullock's orioles and to scan a field of chipping, lark, and white-crowned sparrows that haven't yet left these wintering grounds. In one thicket, a great horned owl stares at us, and the river reeds bend lightly beneath red-winged blackbirds, whose buzzy calls mix with the “witchity-witchity” of a newly arrived common yellowthroat. We never spot the yellowthroat; instead, an electric yellow Wilson's warbler rewards our efforts.

“Such an abundance of birds!” exclaims a man from nearby Sedona.

A shadow passes over us, and we look up to see an immense black bird, wings held in a V, tilting on the breeze. “I think I know that one,” the man says. “Vulture, right?” I quickly see a critical difference—several white tail stripes—between this and our common turkey vultures. “Well, if you were a small bird, you might make the same assumption and end up as that bird’s dinner,” I explain. “But that bird is one of our Southwest specialties - the zone-tailed hawk. It often hangs out with our abundant turkey vultures, which eat only carrion. But the zone-tailed hawk captures live prey. The hawk looks so much like the vultures that its prey isn't wary.” I point out the bird's long tail and wide rectangular wings, for I expect my best treat to turn up soon.

Sure enough, as we near the trail's farthest point 15 minutes later, another black raptor circles overhead. Someone ventures, “It sort of looks like that zone-tailed hawk, but something’s different.” We've sighted a common black-hawk. Though originating from the tropical forest as far south as Peru, I've seen them cruising over every river canyon in this area. These clefts of the Mogollon Rim form one of the black-hawk's few territories in the southwestern United States, and it breeds here, feeding its young a gourmet menu of

fish, frogs, crawfish, reptiles, small birds and rodents.

I point out some important differences from the zone-tailed hawk. "Black-hawks have a yellow face and beak and a short, very fanned-out tail with just one bright white tail stripe. Its 48-inch wingspan is a few inches shorter than the zone-tailed, and its wings are extremely deep from front edge to back. I think of it as all wings. Its nest is right there, in that cottonwood, so I was quite sure we'd see it."

My group grows excited. We've found 53 species in less than three hours, yet two minutes later we find a spectacular bonus -birds that surprised me at the same place last year. Perhaps they're becoming seasonal regulars, dropping down over the Mogollon Rim to winter in the warmer Verde Valley, as do juncos, Western bluebirds and others. Red face, gray neck, pink belly, green back-the most unlikely colors of any woodpecker in the United States -the rare Lewis's woodpecker gets added to our life lists. Everyone hogs the spotting scope as the iridescent birds obligingly pose atop a snag.

At the festival's evening banquet, birders compare notes: bald eagle nests sighted from the Verde River Canyon Train; green herons, wood ducks and brown-crested flycatchers breeding at Tavasci Marsh; ospreys and crissal thrashers at Pecks Lake in the Clarkdale area. Page Springs Fish Hatchery yielded blue grosbeaks and the flashy vermilion flycatchers, which breed there, as well as migrant lazuli buntings.

Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon served up many specialties: the red-faced warbler, black-headed grosbeak, painted redstart, black-chinned sparrow, broad-tailed hummer, indigo bunting, band-tailed pigeon, American dipper and peregrine falcon, to name a few. Camp Verde produced the bridled titmouse, Scott's oriole, verdin and cactus wren, among others.

Canada geese and a dozen duck species that winter in the Verde Valley have gone north already, but mallards and wood ducks remain. The rufous hummingbird won't wing through, southbound, until July, but black-chinned and broad-tailed hummingbirds have arrived to breed, and Anna's live here all year.

Virginia Gilmore's book, Birding Sedona & the Verde Valley (Northern Arizona Audubon Society, 1999), lists 296 species. Last year's Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival reported 177 species in three days, many of them different from the 140 seen during December's Christmas bird count. Those abundant winter species do a reverse trek from our April travelers, coming just as far south as needed to find open water and food.

What makes the Verde Valley such a treasure trove of birds? In the language of bird real estate, location, location, location. Camp Verde and Cottonwood, with the warmer climate of a 3,200-foot elevation, offer grasslands, farm fields and stream banks. Clarkdale boasts varied habitats from Pecks Lake and Tavasci Marsh to piñon-juniper forests and Verde and Sycamore canyons. At elevations of 4,000 to 5,500 feet, Sedona's and adjacent Oak Creek Canyon's red-rock cliff habitats welcome ravens, canyon wrens and peregrine falcons, and the American dipper seeks out the splashing rapids of Oak Creek. The Mogollon Rim and Black Hills encircle the area with 6,000to 7,700-foot pine-clad highlands.

Like the birds themselves, birders can pause while passing through, come for a longer visit or spend a lifetime exploring the bounty of this avian crossroads.