female Phainopepla Our three targets were Le Conte's Thrasher, Crissal Thrasher, and Long-eared Owl. Le Conte's was my most-wanted species, so we spent a lot of time wandering around Clark Dry Lake and the Borrow Pit area of Anza Borrego, but we had no luck. We swung at Crissal's Thrasher in the Borrego Sink - the only place where a tiny population of Crissal's Thrashers are hanging on in San Diego County. That was miserable. The sink is a low area that historically had a large and healthy population of mesquite tapping into the water. But now the city of Borrego Springs has used so much water that the water table has receded and all the mesquite is dead. It's depressing to wander around these shriveled and sun-blackened skeletons hoping to glimpse a population of birds that's undoubtedly doomed. We won't be going back. Crissal Thrashers are more easily found near the Colorado River, so we'll probably look for them there or in Arizona. Long-eared Owls are supposed to spend the winter and spring hanging out at Tamarisk Grove campground. We checked in with a ranger, and he said that his year they never showed up; victims of last year's drought. With no seeds to eat, the small animal population suffered, and consequently large predators have had to move on.
We did see a lot of neat wildflowers. There's a nice little bloom going on in a few places of the park. Here's an album of just flower pictures that we took.
Birdcage Evening Primrose
Black-throated SparrowWe also witnessed a large push of swallows migrating north in the twilight. The wind was blowing hard by this time, from the north, but they were plunging on inexorably. They flew low , passing within feet of us as they gave every bit of effort to make progress in flights of 10 - 20. Every few minutes a new flock would come up and pass us. Migration is such a force of nature. These birds were giving everything they had for every yard of progress, but they kept going.
For posterity's sake, I'll include a pitiful little bird list. Phainopepla were common around the small oases we checked out. This doesn't include birds seen on the road in the mountains above. We had a fair sampling of the year-round residents, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Black-throated Sparrow and Verdin are common desert-only species that we don't often get to see.
1) Common Raven
2) American Kestrel
3) Prairie Falcon
4) Black-throated Sparrow
5) White-crowned Sparrow
6) Verdin
7) Horned Lark
8) Phainopepla
9) Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
10) House Finch
11) Lesser Goldfinch
12) Northern Mockingbird
13) Ruby-crowned Kinglet
14) Swallow sp. (N. Rough-winged or Tree, I think)
14) Costa's Hummingbird: two males and a female on a nest in a Tamarisk
15) Loggerhead Shrike - these were very common around Clark Dry Lake.
We saw Roadrunner tracks, but we didn't see any.
3 comments:
Geez, for a failure of a trip, you sure saw quite a few birds I've never seen. I really wish I could see a Phainopepla.
It all depends on what you want to see, I guess. I still remember Dad's Desert animals book had a picture of a male Phainopepla with a blood red eye staring out of a color photo somewhere inside. That's the only bird I remember from that book.
We had our first Phainopepla in Joshua Tree back in 06.
Then, when we were in Arizona last July we couldn't spit without hitting a Phainopepla. Cool at first, but any super-abundant bird gets kind of tiring eventually if you're trying to find something different and you have to sort through them every time. There were definitely thousands in the right habitat (dense Sonoran high desert riparian).
I didn't do any spitting in Arizona, but it's true that we saw a whole lot of Phainopeplas. I don't spit.
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