This End Up

[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25] Golden aspens soar in the crisp, cool air of Hart Prairie. Located on the western slope of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, the prairie's aspens provide a compelling lure to fall color enthusiasts. [LEFT] Star trails appear to swirl around the North Star in this longexposure view punctuated by towering ponderosa pines on the Mogollon Rim.

[RIGHT, ABOVE] In a scene fashioned by wind's and water's ceaseless weathering, sunset light models Lake Powell's sandstone formations against the backdrop of Gunsight Butte and Navajo Mountain. [RIGHT, BELOW] The compacted sands of ancient sea and shore form the massive cliffs of Margs Draw near Sedona.

[ABOVE] Winter rains produce ephemeral cascades near Fish Creek in the Superstition Wilderness.

[BELOW, RIGHT] A saguaro's spiky ridges catch the last fingerings of evening light.

Hummingbirds' SONGS

Serenades from the iridescent little creatures serve as a twittering type of grammar DAWN'S FAINT FLUSH illuminated the high, curtainless window at Discovery Ranch in Ramsey Canyon and ended my long wait. At last, I could bounce out of bed and hop one-legged into my blue jeans. I did not-on any account-want to be late.

After all, the greatest variety of hummingbirds in North America now began gathering outside along the long row of feederszooming, whirring, chirping, peeping and singing songs of such delicate complexity that it takes an obsessive researcher with a directional-sound microphone and a computer to detect their mysterious grammar. All right, admit it. You're thinking I'm some kind of weirdo-lying awake in the predawn darkness and yearning after hummingbirds, be they blue-throated or blackchinned, white-eared or broad-tailed, violetcrowned or ruby-throated.

And it's true enough. Once upon a time, hummingbirds seemed to me but an indistinguishable blur of motion, a flash of iridescence, an insignificant squeak and a wing. Then I read some intriguing research about hummingbird communications conducted in southeast Arizona by behavioral ecologist Millicent "Penny" Ficken and electrical engineer-turned-ecologist Kathryn Rusch. The two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers did their field work in Arizona, where the 17 resident and migratory species draw experts like a jar of red sugar water draws hummingbirds.

Using tape recorders and computers, Ficken and Rusch discovered that some species of hummingbirds produce gentle songs rivaling in intricacy those of the most operatic songbirds. Computer analysis also has so far revealed a hidden grammar in the trills, chirps and twitters of three hummingbird species: the blue-throated, blackchinned and ruby-throated.The findings excited researchers since, in evolutionary terms, hummingbirds have been on their own path for a long while, developing only in the New World. As a result, studies of hummingbird songs and calls can help provide a contrast and counterpoint to the much better-studied warbles of songbirds. After reading about Ficken and Rusch's findings in National Geographic, Natural History and two ornithological journals, The Condor and The Auk, I decided to visit the hummingbird "holy land," hoping to hear what this team refers to as the "whisper song" of the tiny creatures.

Most of the world's 300 species of nectarsipping, insect-gobbling hummingbirds live in the Tropics. Some follow the bloom of spring northward, but only a few species live year-round in North America. The rufous travels up to 2,700 miles a year journeying from Mexico to Alaska. Ruby-throated hummingbirds bulk up, then use the stored fat for a non-stop 500-mile journey across the Gulf of Mexico.

Hummingbirds appear implausible creatures with prodigious appetites and metabolisms. If you burned energy as fast, you'd need to devour 1,000 Big Macs a day, whereupon your body temperature would rise to 750 degrees and you'd burst into flames. Hummingbirds take up to 600 breaths per minute, and their oversized hearts beat up to 1,200 times per minute. Of all birds, only they can hover motionless and fly backward, thanks to single-jointed wings that rotate to generate lift on both the down and the up stroke. With wings beating up to 52 times a second, they reach speeds of 60 miles per hour. Hummingbirds also have unusually large brains for their size, with expanded areas for learning and memory.

Their survival depends on frequent drinks of nectar, most often from trumpet-shaped orange and red flowers for which they fiercely compete. They flash their vivid colors or zoom in breathtaking flight displays to intimidate rivals or to impress would-be mates. Their shimmer comes from the prismlike refraction of light through microscopic bubbles in their hollow feathers. They're spectacular to see, but biologists never gave hummingbirds much credit for their squeaky songs and calls. Ficken and Rusch helped change that with their recordings and computers, and even that started by accident. They'd originally headed to Ramsey Canyon to record bridled titmouse communication patterns. Rusch was studying the way sound carries in different habitats. One slow afternoon, she turned her mike on some darting hummingbirds.

"Initially they didn't sound too interesting - kind of squeaky," said Rusch. "But when I recorded the black-chinned, I discovered they were very interesting, and there was little about them in the scientific literature. What makes hummingbirds exciting is that they are a separate evolutionary branch, and don't share a common ancestor with song-birds for a long while back.

[CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT] Southern Arizona draws bird-watchers from around the world to peer at the rich lode of hummingbirds found there, such as the broad-billed (male), the white-eared (male), Anna's (male), the black-chinned (male), the broad-tailed (male) and the blue-throated (male).

Rusch spent some long days wandering through the Southwestern Research Station in Portal looking for hummingbirds she could record. She watched as the tiny creatures jostled, bumped, collided and stabbed in mid-air. A furiously struggling pair of blue-throated hummingbirds crashed into each other so fiercely they knocked themselves out of the air. Still locked in combat with wings beating furiously, they somersaulted across the porch at her feet.

"They just rolled over my feet and kept going," recalled Rusch. "You'll see wild stuff like that-bumping each other, grappling, falling to the ground, then flying off."

She noted that the various species establish vigorous pecking orders, with the more aggressive blue-throateds driving off the magnificents, who rout yet smaller species. In the meantime, schemers like the black-chinned will hover at the edge of a territory, waiting for a chance to nip in for a sip of nectar or sugar water when the dominant bird is distracted.

Ficken soon focused on the soft "whisper song" of the blue-throateds, a complicated sequence intended to charm a passing female. To her surprise, she observed the females perch nearby and join in, overlapping one another in a sort of singing "jam session," different from almost all other songbirds.

In most songbird species, the males sing and the females make their choices based on the melody, although biologists can't really explain why.

Ficken recorded the sounds of blue-throated hummingbirds and then hurried back to the research lab, where she used a unique computer program to decipher them. The songs were composed of five different notes, combined in a multifarious structure, a grammarlike series of rules governing the combination of different notes. The male's whisper song could go on for long stretches and compared in complexity to the melodies of more celebrated songbirds like the American robin. The female's song proved equally intricate.

Meanwhile, Rusch discovered a similar complexity in the challenge calls of the black-chinned hummingbird, the sequence of chirps, squeaks, chips and trills they spew when cussing out a competitor. The black-chinned combines five notes in a way that also suggests a grammatical structure.

Ficken also gathered some tantalizing evidence that the birds learn these songs locally; the songs seemed to change as the bird grew older, and the "accent" appeared to differ between Ramsey Canyon and theOther hummingbirds observed using distinct mating or territorial posting songs include the magnificent, the rare white-eared and the Anna's.

Chiricahua Mountains to the northeast.

It's a fascinating picture. For instance, the rare white-eared male hummingbirds assemble in lovesick choruses called leks. Females buzz by-checking out the singles bar lineup-and select a mate based on some quality of the song. Ficken and Rusch have not yet figured out why some hummers sing while others use simpler calls to defend territory. Perhaps more tropical species that live in thick foliage rely on songs while those living in more open terrain frequently rely on flight displays and colors.

Other species-like the broad-tailed-produce a strong "wing buzz" as they fly, which apparently also deters rivals without the need for an actual fight. One researcher glued together some birds' wing feathers to reduce the buzz and found that this made the birds less successful in territorial defense.

All told, the Arizona research demonstrates that many species of hummingbirds have developed complex vocalizations to mediate the otherwise brutal competition for nectar and mates.

All of which, I hope, explains why I hastened into my clothes at dawn at Discovery Ranch, a favorite haunt among hummingbird lovers.

Outside, the mountains glowed with the low-angle light of the rising sun, red-shifted by its long slant through the atmosphere of the spinning planet. The air hummed and whizzed with little birds prismatically flash-ing heart-stopping green and red and gold. I wandered about in the yard, craning my neck for a glimpse of the emerald splendor of a gigantic magnificent and ducking from the dive-bomber wing buzz of a broad-tailed. Eventually I made my way to the patio and settled myself in a chair 10 feet from a swaying row of feeders.

I sat for hours trying to separate their vocal duels and watching the swirl and shimmer of hummingbirds contending for the feeders as they darted in and out of the foliage surrounding the second-floor veranda.

Several fanatic rufous hummingbirds dominated the feeders, flashing like molten gold whenever they passed through a slant of sunlight. Fearless wanderers, each year the 3-inch-long bundles of swagger set out from Mexico for breeding sites as far north as Alaska. They've learned how to bully their way to the front of the chow line and then move restlessly on. They squeaked and tit-tered and trilled-all ego and attitude. It had apparently never occurred to them that creatures without the bulk to bend a rose stem ought to cultivate humility. Whenever other hummingbirds approached a claimed feeder, one rufous would hurl himself on them, sputtering and squeaking. Usually, the challenged birds fled in an eye-blink. Sometimes, they stood their air, unleashing such a rush of feathered invective it made me blush.

I left the veranda and wandered among the trees, alert for blue-throateds whispering together in soft syllables of lust and longing, sweet nothings to which we have only lately learned to listen. AlEDITOR'S NOTE: Hummingbird species found in Arizona include Anna's, Costa's, black-chinned, rufous, broad-billed, broad-tailed, magnificent, blue-throated, calliope, Lucifer, Allen's, violet-crowned, berylline, white-eared, plain-capped starthroat, bumblebee and cinnamon.

After researching this story, Peter Aleshire festooned his Phoenix patio with feeders and actually tried to convince the editor that his story was late because he was spending too much time watching hummingbirds outside the kitchen window.

Arizona's wide variety of hummingbird species keeps Tucson-based G.C. Kelley happily engaged year-round in capturing them on film.

LOCATION: Approximately 200 miles southeast of Phoenix.

ARIZONA HUMMINGBIRD HOT SPOTS:

Arizona's hummingbird hot spots include the Huachuca Mountains near Sierra Vista, especially Miller, Ramsey, Carr and Garden canyons; the San Pedro River area; Madera Canyon south of Tucson; the Chiricahua Mountains, especially in the areas of Turkey Creek and Portal; and the Sonoita Creek Preserve, between Sierra Vista and Tucson.

GETTING THERE:

To reach the Ramsey Canyon Preserve, managed by The Nature Conservancy, take Interstate 10 southeast from Phoenix and turn south on State Route 90, about 35 miles east of Tucson. At the first traffic signal south of Huachuca City, turn left to remain on State 90. At the intersection of 90 and State Route 92, go straight ahead to travel on State 92. Go south for 6 miles to Ramsey Canyon Road and turn right to the preserve.

HOURS:

From March through October, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.; from November through February, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

FEES:

Good for seven days from date of purchase, $5 for visitors over 16 years old; $3 for Cochise County residents and Nature Conservancy members.

LODGING:

Some people living in these prime hummingbird areas, including a number of bed and breakfast inns, regularly put out feeders to draw the birds. Key spots that draw hummingbirds every year include Discovery Ranch, Hereford, (520) 3782000; Beatty's Miller Canyon Guest Ranch & Orchard, Hereford, (520) 378-2728; Ramsey Canyon Inn Bed & Breakfast, Hereford, (520) 378-3010; San Pedro River Inn, Hereford, (520) 366-5532; Cave Creek Ranch, Portal, (520) 558-2334; and Chuparosa Inn, Madera Canyon, (520) 393-7370.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Coronado National Forest, Sierra Vista Ranger District, (520) 3780311; The Nature Conservancy's Ramsey Canyon Preserve, (520) 378-2785.

A Clever Car Dealer Puts a Record-breaking Racer

in His Place

In 1924, St. Johns, a ranching community in eastern Arizona, boasted a municipal water system, one motionpicture theater, two barber shops, a pool hall, numerous retail stores and Joy B. Patterson, the man who outwitted and outdistanced the famous Barney Oldfield in a cross-country race.

Patterson had built the first service station in Apache County on Commercial Street in 1922 and opened the first Chevrolet dealership in northeastern Arizona.

C. LeRoy Wilhelm, in A History of the St. Johns Stake, wrote: "Impressive in any crowd, he was a giant, not only physically, but in other ways. He had built a reputation for honesty and would go to any lengths to protect it."

But Patterson had a fixationhe liked to drive fast. His son, Rob Roy Patterson, said, "It wasn't so much that he liked to race. He just couldn't stand for anyone to pass him." His granddaughter, Sandra Cornforth, said, "He absolutely refused to use a horn on a car."

Another son, Jay, remembered his dad as fairly reckless. "He scared the heck out of me every time I rode with him. My earliest memory of traveling was going with him to get

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new automobiles that came in on the railroad. He had a 19-inch neck and weighed about 250 pounds. He'd pick up the cars by the bumper and bounce them out of the railroad cars. He was a tough old buzzard."

During his 86 years of life, Joy Patterson acquired business interests in trucking, sawmills, sheep and cattle ranches, service stations and motels, along with the Patterson Motor Company. He and his wife, Josephine, with whom he had 11 children, saw the wonders of the world.

But nothing gave him more satisfaction than remembering the day when the famous speedster Barney Oldfield met his match.

In June 1924, the talk along Commercial Street was all about the Fourth of July car races. The St. Johns Herald announced: "It is evident that we will have the biggest and best car race yet. People are coming from all over." A History of the St. Johns Stake noted, "Top drivers from over the Southwest were always in attendance, and occasionally a national figure showed up. In 1924 the flamboyant Barney Oldfield was in attendance."

The race that attracted the most attention went 120 miles cross-country on a ruttedwagon road winding through the junipers between Gallup, New Mexico, and St. Johns. The winner would get $1,500; second place, $1,000; third place, $500.

No one knows what persuaded Patterson to enter the race. It might have been the fact that the Whiting Brothers, his business rivals, were entering one of their Fords. It might have been the prize money, which would have bought three top-of-the-line Chevys. Or it might have been the challenge of racing the legendary Barney Oldfield, who had entered.

The mere mention of Barney Oldfield's name would have intimidated most drivers. Born Bernard Eli Oldfield, he began his career racing bicycles, then motorcycles. In 1902 he drove Henry Ford's 999 racer to victory over champion Alexander Winton. Shortly thereafter, he broke the mile-a-minute barrier, powering his car across the mile mark in 55.8 seconds.On that occasion, Oldfield described his experience to news reporters: "You have every sensation of being hurled through space; the machine is throbbing under you with its cylinders beating a drummer's tattoo, and the air tears past you in a gale. I tell you,