The last week has just been fabulous for birding. It seems like everyday something new shows up. Being in Arizona makes it seem even more exciting because there are lots of birders who will travel to see birds. Take a Herring Gull for example, in South Dakota a pretty easy bird at the right time of year, here in the Sonoran Desert, a rarity. Today I had two of them, along with a Brown Pelican, two or maybe three Heermann’s Gulls, a couple of dozen Bonaparte’s Gulls, and a California Gull along with a bunch of Ring-billed Gulls. As the Arizona birders say, any gull is a good gull in Pima County. The reason for all this bird movement is the weather, of course. A strong front came through last night and today was very windy, with SSW winds blowing up to 35 mph, straight up from the Sea of Cortez.
I was just about to leave this morning when I took one last look and was amazed to see this Brown Pelican coming in for a landing. Brian Nicholas texted me yesterday to let me know someone had seen one flying along I-8 at Gila Bend, he thought it might come this way. Is this the same bird? Who knows. One of the Heermann’s Gulls that was here today, in late afternoon light. For awhile all the celebrities were together, Brown Pelican, 2 Heermann’s Gulls, and a Herring Gull, the gull on the right is a Ring-billed Gull. One of the Herring Gulls. I’ve never seen this species in Arizona before, today I saw two. Some of the birders who came today. Yesterday afternoon I got more photos of the Varied Thrush, this time with the 500 f4 and a 1.4 TC, for 700mm focal length. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and gloomy so I didn’t have very good light. Still, I think this is the best photo of Varied Thrush I have so far. I took more photos of Black-throated Gray Warblers today, getting some really nice ones. Pretty hard to beat a warbler photo like this!
As always, to see a larger image right click on the photo to open in a new tab.
This afternoon I got the best photo I’ve ever taken of a Rufous-backed Robin. The Varied Thrush is still here too. The good birds here are also attracting birders. Mark Otnes, who has moved to Tucson from North Dakota, came out this morning. I have been meeting more birders from Arizona and some from California this fall than ever.
Rufous-backed Robin at the golf course pond. Light was nice, I had to crop more than I like but it still looks pretty good. This species is very skittish and hard to approach. Why is its mouth open? Because it is hot, temperature was hovering around 100F this afternoon, record breaking heat again. Varied Thrush eating an earthworm. Another Eastern Phoebe has appeared, this one is at the golf course. This is NGC 772, the Fiddlehead Galaxy. I will need to get a lot more time in on this galaxy before it will look very good. It is twice the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, but it is so far away (130 million light years) it appears small and faint.
The run on good birds just gets better. Today I found a Varied Thrush at the golf course. I got the best photos I’ve ever taken of this species. Quite a few people from Tucson and Phoenix came to see it. Also found a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and a Summer Tanager, both are the first ones I’ve ever seen around Ajo. And to top it off, a Fox Sparrow, which I have seen here several times but still pretty rare for the Sonoran Desert.
As always, right click on a photo and open in a new tab to see a larger image.
Female Varied Thrush at the Ajo Country Club. Best photos I’ve ever taken of this species!Not sure what it is feeding on, but it was picking up things under a Eucalyptus tree. I have lots more photos, this is all I will post for now. Juvenile female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, this species does not acquire adult plumage until late winter, as opposed to the Red-naped Sapsucker, which is well into adult plumage by now. Here’s a juvenile male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker I photographed today. Summer Tanager. This appears to be an eastern female type. Fox Sparrow. I think it is a Slate-colored Fox Sparrow.
It has been a busy few days, mostly due to a Lapland Longspur that showed up at the sewage ponds. In South Dakota, one can see thousands of Lapland Longspurs during some winters and nearly always some in most winters, but in Arizona one is a big deal. I first saw the bird on Saturday afternoon and got the word out. Sunday was a busy day with birders coming in to find it. Some succeeded, some didn’t. It was not a cooperative bird and stayed too far out for any good photographs.
Lapland Longspur at the Ajo Sewage Ponds. Very tough bird to get any good photos of. Perhaps the most amazing thing I saw on Sunday was this bat. I first saw something small swimming toward shore very rapidly. Now this is not something one typically sees at the pond. I couldn’t tell what it was till it came to the edge and scurried up the fabric liner. It was a bat! I guess it must have trying to get a drink, got too low and couldn’t escape the water. I know now that bats can swim very well. This is a free-tailed bat of unknown species (see the long tail). It was fairly large so I’m guessing a Big Free-tailed Bat or a Western Mastiff Bat. Even more surprising was how quickly it was able to fly off. According to my bat book, most if not all free-tailed bats cannot take off with out a considerable drop-off height under them. But this one did, even when wet. Perhaps it was due to the steep slope it was on. I was able to get a couple of very poor photos. The tail and large ears are evident. I found this Harris’s Hawk feeding on a rodent. There were two more waiting for some of the food. The bird looks normal from this side but….It is missing its left eye. It looks like the wound is still draining. Apparently it still able to hunt. Here’s a photo with the other two Harris’s Hawks. They are both smaller the the one-eyed hawk.
Today I got a message from Tim Burkhardt to let me know that a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper had been found near Dateland. That is about 60 miles from where I am. A Sharp-tailed Sandpiper is definitely worth a drive. I headed out and got there in time to meet some other birders who pointed out exactly where it was along with seven Least Sandpipers. I quickly took a few photos and then got to talking with the others. As we watched the shorebirds all flushed and flew a few hundred yards and landed again. A few minutes later, someone thought they heard the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper fly overhead. It must have been it because we never saw it again. I got there just in the nick of time, if I had stopped anywhere along the way I would have missed it. I would have liked to get some better photos but that’s the way it goes sometimes. More birders were showing up only to be disappointed.
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper with Least Sandpipers. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper breeds in the boggy tundra of northeast Asia and winters in south-east Asia and Australia. In North America it is a rare migrant, usually in fall and usually along west coast. ABA life bird #605.I couldn’t pass up this nice shot of a male Gambel’s Quail. Greater Roadrunner nicely showing the zygodactyl toe pattern as it runs. The birds leave a distinctive track. This might be the best Mars photo I will ever get with my current equipment. Olympus Mons is a little below center on the right edge. I stacked about 13,000 frames from 30,000 frames of video taken over four minutes (software selects the best frames for stacking). Four minutes is about as long as one can take video and stack before the planet rotation starts to blur detail. I’m pretty happy with this. Taken last night at about 11 PM.
Birding has been pretty good here. Most of the desert is very dry so the areas with water or that are watered, like the city parks and the golf course, have been active. It has really cooled down with the passage of a cold front and that has brought in more birds too. I had to turn on the heater last night and probably will again tonight. The big excitement today was a Ross’s Goose that appeared on the Ajo sewage ponds. Apparently this is a first record for Ajo, according to Ebird, and the first in Pima County this year. Two birders from Tucson, both of whom are doing a Pima County Big Year, came out here to get it.
Ross’s Goose at the Ajo Sewage Ponds. Here’s an interesting sequence of photos. This Red-naped Sapsucker was feeding on palm berries. I think of this species as a shy and retiring type of bird but I learned that this is not necessarily the case. A Gila Woodpecker came in to feed and landed close to the sapsucker. These are much larger birds than sapsuckers. I happened to be focused on the sapsucker when the action started. Right now the sapsucker is saying “Hey bub, this is my space”. Fast action, the sapsucker moved before the camera could refocus so it is blurry but look at how the sapsucker goes for the throat. The larger Gila Woodpecker didn’t even fight back, it just left.
I left Granite Gap this morning. Last night I spent a few hours photographing Mars since the “seeing” was forecast to be good and now Olympus Mons is on the right side of the planet. I figured I better try it because the weather is going to change, the jet stream will dip far south and that means the “seeing” will be pretty bad for a while. The results were OK but I hope for better later this month. On my way to Ajo I stopped at the Ina Street bridge over the Santa Cruz River to see if I could find the Northern Jacana. It only took about 10 minutes to do that and take some photos. I got into the campground at Ajo around 4 PM. It was 97 F. but this is the supposed to be the last day of hot weather. I hope so.
As always, right click on an image and open in a new tab to see it displayed at a larger size.
Northern Jacana. The light was terrible, midday glare and I could not get very close to the bird so all I got were some documentation photos. ABA area life bird #604. Extremely long toes allow it to walk on emergent vegetation. Northern Jacana is a very rare visitor to the United States, only in south Texas and southeast Arizona. The Ghost Nebula is starting to look better with two more hours. Mars from last night. The light area in the top center is Olympus Mons.
Yes, I’m still here. However, the weather in the Sonoran Desert is finally going to cool down and I will be in Ajo by Wednesday. It will be nice to be closer to a grocery store. I’ve been busy with astrophotography and my usual hiking and reading. This is a nice spot for quiet camping. I have a good crew of hummingbirds coming to my feeder now, Black-chins, Anna’s, and Rufous. I’ve been putting out the trail camera every night hoping for the mountain lion to come by but so far all I’ve got is coyotes, a gray fox, and rabbits.
As always, right click on an image and open in a new tab to see it displayed at a larger size.
Tarantula Hawk walking on a board. These are somewhat difficult to get a good photo of. A Robber Fly sucking the juice out of a bee. I can’t resist a shot like this. I now have an Anna’s Hummingbird at my feeder. This is a juvenile male.I’ve spent two nights gathering photons for this image. I now have a total of about 4 hours of exposure. In the upper left is the Iris Nebula and lower right is the Ghost Nebula. Both are in clouds of space dust in the direction of the constellation Cepheus. Here is the Ghost Nebula cropped out and some rather heavy-handed processing. It is a pretty neat nebula, I can see why it is named the Ghost! I am out tonight gathering more light from this region, so will see what another two hours of exposure will do.
I’m still here at Granite Gap. No break in the heat out in the Sonoran Desert. That’s OK because this is a great place for astrophotography and nights are currently moonless. Every night is good, clear, usually no wind, dark. Compared to South Dakota, this is great for astro. Up there I can only wish for a good night or two during the new moon period. Yesterday I put quite a bit of time in on Sage Thrashers trying for a better shot of them eating juniper berries.
Finally, I got a good shot of a Sage Thrasher eating juniper berries. Once they get used to me sitting there, they will come out in the open, but it takes awhile. It is too bad that branch is covering the tail, but nothing I can do about it. This is M15, the Pegasus Cluster. Located, as one would suspect from the name, in the constellation Pegasus. M15 is about 33,600 light years from Earth, and is an estimated 175 light-years in diameter. It is one of the oldest star clusters known, at around 12 billion years. The Cocoon Nebula. I have done this before but it is quite small and by using the C8, it looks much more impressive. Located in Cygnus, it is is a stellar nursery where star-formation is ongoing. M33, Triangulum Galaxy, which I have done many times with the 500 f4 lens. This image was done with the C8. The galaxy is nearly too big to get it framed but it does fit.
As always, right click on any image to open in a new tab if you want to see it at full size.
I’m still here at Granite Gap. This is sure a nice, peaceful campsite. I am surprised at the lack of use since the Forest Service campgrounds are closed and this is listed as a free camping area on the various internet sites. I suppose it is due to it not being a good place for the big trailers and motorhomes. It is suited to small campers only. The long range weather forecast doesn’t show much hope for going to Ajo for at least a week but I might move further west in a few days.
Sage Thrasher eating juniper berries. This was in a bad place for photography, with the bird in the shade and a bright background, but some work with Photoshop made it look pretty good. The Wizard Nebula with the C8. I have about 3 hours of exposure on it now. This is an emission nebula that surrounds the open star cluster NGC 7380 in the constellation Cepheus. I’ve seen some really nice images of this nebula but it takes 8-10 hours (or more) of exposure to really get the fine details and I’m not sure I have the patience for that. It was pretty windy one night so I used the 500 f4 lens instead of the C8. The C8 really does not do well in wind. I elected to put the entire night (until the moon came up) on the Andromeda Galaxy. This was an experiment. NGC 1333 (also known as the Embryo Nebula) is very small and faint. I have tried it before with the 500 f4 but it is too small. With the C8 the issue is getting enough exposure. I used ISO 12000 to see what would happen with 2 minute exposures. It isn’t too bad but there is a lot of noise and the image quality is poor. At this low resolution I suppose it looks fine. This is another one that would take many hours to get a really good image.
