Blowin' In The Wind

A mis compañeros de ratas del desierto,

Perhaps nobody was more surprised than the tumbleweed.

Just moments before, it had been rolling along the desert contentedly, bouncing off fences and cactus and the occasional derelict building like tumbleweeds are wont to do. Then, it picked up speed as the heat-driven winds accelerated, bounded across three lanes of traffic, and was now milliseconds from being obliterated on the grill of my car.

While my surprise was no match for the tumbleweed's, I admit that I was not expecting the impact that shattered the poor tumbleweed into literally one billion pieces. Then again, I probably shouldn't have had quite so much faith in my ability to play Frogger with tumbleweeds during a blinding dust storm, surrounded by other cars and the occasional semi-truck, and with everybody else (not me!) driving just a bit too fast.

Here, we have captured this moment for your viewing pleasure:

A moment of silence now for the tumbleweeds that met their untimely demise somewhere around Casa Grande.



Thank you.

Now, the evening didn't start with a dust storm. We deplaned in Phoenix to a beautiful, sunny, 105F evening with perfectly clear skies. Only 30 minutes into our drive to Tucson, the skies started darkening as thick clouds of dust were blown up from the desert floor, and eventually we hit nearly black-out conditions.

The desert is a study in contrasts like these: bright, azure skies transition quickly to dark, brown dust. The landscape of rock and sand and thorny cactus that looks nearly uninhabitable is full of plant and animal life. And the time when the temperatures are hottest is also when most of the annual rain falls.

Monsoon season in the Sonoran Desert usually begins in July and continues through August, but it arrived early this year. So, days typically begin calm and clear, puffy clouds form around mid-day, and then thunderstorms attempt to batter you into submission from mid-afternoon until evening. Each day of our short trip south followed this pattern.

The good news is that we found our main target, an extremely rare Tufted Flycatcher! Not one, but two! Fewer than 10 have ever been recorded in the US, but this summer, two flew up from Mexico and decided to try to raise a family here. Can anybody say, "Anchor Baby"?

Tufted Flycatcher, sadly eyeing the throng of birders below, wondering when they will just GO AWAY, and whether he made the right choice to come to America.

The clump on the left is their nest, and you can just see the top of Mom's head peeking out!

The bad news is that we missed all the exotic hummingbirds we had hoped to see, and we got rained out the one evening we had to find a nocturnal bird, the nightjar. Sad face. So, we get to take another trip to Arizona in the next 6-8 weeks, as the birds will move back south to Mexico after August.

Our count is now at 594, just 6 shy of our original goal for the year (which we are thinking we should reset to a new target, since we still have 6 months of birding to go!). Next up: a long weekend in Tahoe! There are far, far worse places one could go birding, and with 10 birds in the area that we need for our year, there's a reasonable chance we could hit our goal soon!

Stay frosty,
Me