I am on my way for yet another business trip. Alas, this one will not allow for any squeezed-in birding. I know I have been absent from my much-loved bird blog for a long while, but hang in there with me, this is my last trip of the year. 

Let me offer you a shot from my Arizona trip.  While in Madera Canyon at the Madera Kubo B&B (incredible birding mecca) I was able to drink my fill of this Hepatic Tanager.  Mmm, wait, that sounds sort of vampiric.  Let me re-phrase, I was able to stare at it for long periods.  Better perhaps, but not as poetic.  It sat in this tree for most of the afternoon, flitting from branch to branch but always in full camera view.  Gorgeous, isn’t it?

Check out the other great photos at Birdfreak’s Bird Photography Weekly

Since I am going to be in Phoenix for business, I decided to take a few vacation days  to visit with some friends and go birding.  I have some target birds I hope to see, not the least among them are those pesky quails.  I will be going out with Melody Kehl again.  I’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, here is a photo of a Roadrunner to tide you over.

I jerked my head around and froze.

DANGER!

Alarm bells were going off in my head.  Thrashing sounds among the trees are never a good thing, regardless of where you might be on the planet. I was standing in the middle of the road, searching for what could have possibly made the sounds when the trees up ahead exploded with a Squirrel Cuckoo executing evasive maneuvers, twisting and turning between branches, with some sort of Forest-falcon in hot pursuit.  The cuckoo dove into a thick patch of leaves and disappeared. The pursuing bird flashed past the cuckoos hiding place.   I was scanning the trees looking for the Forest-falcon when the there was a tussle in the Cuckoo’s hidey hole.  Both birds dashed off again.

I never did ID the Falcon, but at 17-19 inches and with the crazy long spotted tail, the Squirrel Cuckoo was pretty hard to miss.

The rain was falling in buckets, yet a tiny Snowy-bellied Hummingbird sat tenaciously on the top of a Heliconia.  He would make a foray out occasionally, but then return to his perch, point his bill to the sky and sit for long periods.  I stood on the deck pondering this then wandered out into the garden.  It turns out our long-suffering sprite had a terrific spot to wait out the elements.  Above his head and protecting him from at least some of the downpour was a large banana leaf.  What a smart cookie.

Here he is on a better day.

I never saw him sit on that Heliconia again.

We all stared at the flat blue expanse of the firmament. Not a cloud, not a wisp, heck, very few contrails even.  We battled eye floaties, crinks in our necks, and sunburn hoping today was the big one; when the flow of thousands of Broad-winged Hawks would come down from their summer forest homes in the north. We got excited by a plane or a vulture, to use as a point of reference.  We strained to ID distant tiny specks, hurried to count swirling kettles before the birds started to peel away, setting their wings for a drive south. These are the hard days when a  lot of eyes trained to the sky helps.

Luckily for me, lots of people showed up at the Mount Peter Hawk Watch today.  In addition to the other sharp-eyed counters, we had almost 12 members of the Fyke Nature Association come for a field trip.  Chief among them was Stiles Thomas, who established the Hawk Watch in 1958.

According to the history section of the Mt. Peter page on HawkCount! “The Montclair Bird Club of NJ sponsored the ‘Across the State Hawk Watch of 1958′.  The two day watch on September 28 and October 18 produced 349 raptors of 10 species for Mount Peter and enough excitement to propel volunteers into a full-time count.”   There has been someone standing on this mountain doing just this thing for over 50 years. Imagine.

Let me give you a glimpse of the spectacle overhead.  Although many birds were high, some did come right over the platform, giving us fabulous views.  Brilliant sunshine streamed through feathers to the appreciative croons of the watchers.

This is what we had gathered to see.  Although there were only 346 pass overhead today, there were 1312 yesterday and more are gathering to the north for another push south tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until they are all safely basking in the warmth of a South American Spring.

“Is this the one that does the moonwalk?”

I looked over at an older woman standing next to me and shrugged with a little head-shake. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. The only moonwalk I knew of was Michael Jackson’s. I tracked the cherry red head through the gloom and deep shadow. “I’m sure this is the one, ” she persisted.

Luckily the guide came up and overheard her. He knew exactly what she was talking about. Turns out it is an old and well-known video on YouTube. In case you are living in a bucket like me, here it is. You just have to love Manakins.  And dig those yellow thighs.

Northern Wheatears rarely visit the metro area. They breed in the high Arctic, Alaska and Greenland.  (This bird is of the Greenland race, see how buffy it is.)  I missed a Wheatear last fall at Garret Mountain and by the time I was able to get to the Connecticut bird; it had moved on.  So when I read that there was a juvenile bird at DeKorte Park at the Meadowlands, I cleared my calendar and asked my boss for a personal day. (Although she is not a birder, she is understands the life bird thing.)

It was raining when I got up this morning and there was no report that the bird was around.  But by lunch time the reports started to dribble through  just as the sun started to peek through the clouds; so I dashed off to chase the bird.  When I arrived at DeKorte Park there were, surprisingly,  not a lot of birders. And those that were there had long faces.  The bird had been there had not been seen for an hour.  While I walked the Transco Trail peering at rocks and trailside sumac, I chatted with folks (You know how I am.)  I met BA, one of my fellow hawk counters.   She is the one who I spied waving madly from the far end of trail.  As I hustled toward her, I found my friends Diane and Suzanne were also hot on the chase.   The bird was flitting (and doing a Phoebe-like tail pumping thing) along the rocky edge down a small bank.  I watched it for almost an hour.  It is beautiful – so subtlety colored.  North American life bird 620, I think.  I’ll have to go look.

If you go, it is on the right-hand side between the 2 orange hoses.  It is about the size of a robin and prefers the rocks.

I have made the decision (finally, after talking about it for at least a year.) to collapse my 2 blogs.  Basically nothing will change here other than the name (in the short-term), but the old Murmuring Trees will go away (as soon as I can make a hard copy of the entire thing.)  As you can see I flipped the name of the blog already and will start to work on switching to my own domain (yeah, I’ve owned it for, mmm, maybe 2 years).  Hang in there with me.