Birds & Bugs of Arizona - October 2003

Go to Odonates   103 species - see bird list

October 2003 - A week in Arizona doing family things with Kurt and Angie but also sneaking in some time to look for critters.  Locations visited included the Salt River Recreation Areas north of Mesa, Seven Springs north of Scottsdale, the Water Ranch in Gilbert, Agua Fria River Preserve north of Phoenix, Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona (shown on left), and Sycamore Canyon near the Mexican border (shown on right).

My primary reason for visiting this time of year was to look for various species of odonates (42 species; 21 new bugs for Arizona and 16 lifers) so birding was at times somewhat incidental.  It is always fun, however, to see some old friends like Inca Doves, Cactus Wrens, and Curve-billed Thrashers.  Angie's dad, Steve Kinder, had not had a lot of opportunity to bird the areas around Phoenix so we spent the first half of the week finding him a few new birds.  Thanks to friends Pete Moulton and Russ Widner for joining us on various days.  Later in the week I was joined by friends Bud Gode and Rich Hoyer as we looked for odes in Sycamore Canyon near the Mexican border.

I did manage to snap a few shots of some birds.  Click on the thumbnails for a larger picture.

Verdin	Loggerhead Shrike	Rock Wren	Burrowing Owl

The story of the Burrowing Owl is a bit interesting.  The town of Gilbert has done a wonderful job creating urban riparian areas through the use of water treatment facilities.  Because these little owls have been terribly stressed from urban sprawl, the city has introduced them into the park called the Water Ranch and created man-made burrows from large pipe.  This little guy seemed to be claiming the pipe as his home.  I hope the project shows some success.

Most of my time was spent at these two locations.  As you can see from the photos of each, the habitats are extremely varied so have very different critters.  As always, click on the thumbnails for a larger photo.

Oak Creek Canyon

 Oak Creek Canyon is between the towns of Sedona and Flagstaff.  It is beautiful country and we hiked the trail up the West Fork.  The third stream crossing was the best for bugs.  The day consisted of only four species but three of those were lifers - Canyon Rubyspot, Persephone's Darner, and Apache Spiketail.  Not bad!

Sycamore Canyon

After a day in the north with clear mountain streams and great smelling pines, I went south almost to the Mexican border.  Sycamore Canyon is famous among bird listers because several US records have been found here and it was a place I had never been.  Here the pines were replaced by mesquite but there were a number of great bugs.  Although we didn't go far enough down the canyon to experience the gruesome part of the hike, we found several pools of water as well as some running water.  Another Persephone's Darner was a treat as were Spot-winged Meadowhawk and Neon Skimmer.  There were enough damselflies to drive one crazy but we managed to identify a few of them.  Black-and-white Damsel may have been the prize of the day.