Birds of the Sonoran Desert

Wildlife Portraits in Wood: The Birds of the Sonoran Desert

My first bird carving was an outward expression of the love for wildlife I learned on boyhood explorations with my dad and brothers in the Missouri River bottom. It was sort of a memorial to those good days. Later I started my Sonoran Desert collection for similar reasons. A bird lover can't help but want to develop an intimacy with the hardy species that cling to their way of life in this arid land. Think of the years man and bird have lived together. Imagine sparrows eating grain at the grinding stones of the ancient Hohokam. Visualize the boys of some forgotten tribe of ages past stalking a covey of quail. The birds were here long before cactus started making way for condominiums. And they're still here.

When I first arrived in central Arizona five years ago, I felt like the movie buff who had just gotten his first glimpse of a beautiful Hollywood starlet after years of poring over screen magazines. Many times I had thumbed through my bird books and been intrigued by the resident species of the Southwest. Now my old Mustang was my tour bus to their homes. But I needed no tour guide to see most of the birds I expected would be available. The environs of the Salt and Verde rivers rapidly pro-duced hooded and Bullock's (north-ern) orioles, black phoebes, cliff swallows, Abert's towhees, and ladderbacked woodpeckers.

(LEFT) Dan Holman begins his creative process by making a clay model of the bird species to be carved. With the aid of calipers (FAR LEFT), the dimensions of the model are transferred to a basswood block, and the carving begins. (BELOW, LEFT) A pair of gilded flickers, products of Holman's skill, seem poised for flight. (BELOW) An inquisitive black-tailed gnatcatcher investigates a Gambel's quail.

Short drives to units of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, that marvelous group of wilderness enclaves within the ever-expanding city, introduced me to several more species: the tiny verdin, the unusual curve-billed thrasher, the handsome black-throated sparrow, along with raucous Gila woodpeckers and golden flickers, the striking Gambel's quail, and the official state bird, the mischievous cactus wren.

I was amazed at how quickly and easily I found them all-unlike bird-watching in the East, where you peer into a leafy canopy of forest and hope for motion and maybe an unobstructed glimpse. Out here the birds present themselves to you, hopping from the desert floor to the spiny arms of cactus plants. Under such conditions, it is easy to make friends with the species that build their homes in the Valley of the Sun. For one who not only enjoys birding but also creating lifelike carvings of the delicate feathered creatures, it's much like having a favorite motion picture scenario come to life.

Dan Holman, an editor for The Phoenix Gazette newspaper, has been carving birds for ten years.

He spends about forty hours on each figure.

Selected Reading

The Birds of Arizona, by Alan R. Philips, Joe Marshall, and Gale Monson. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1978.

Annotated Checklist of the Birds of Arizona, by Gale Monson and Alan R. Philips. University of Ari-zona Press, Tucson, 1981.

Both books are available (The Birds of Arizona for $41, Annotated Checklist for $6.95, postpaid) from Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009; telephone (602) 258-1000.

Field Guide to the Birds of North America, edited by Shirley L. Scott. National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 1983.

(LEFT) As the figure slowly emerges, details are shaped or incised. Finally acrylic paint is carefully applied, and the bird is ready to be mounted.

(FAR LEFT) On any weekend, you might find Dan Holman in the field, binoculars in hand, scanning a desert thicket.

(FAR LEFT, BELOW) A pair of verdins survey their desert habitat.

(LEFT, BELOW) The somber eyes of two elf owls peer from cavities in a saguaro cactus.

(BELOW) Arizona's state bird, the cactus wren, thrives amid the protective spines of cholla cactus.