Desert Rivers Audubon Field Trips Director & Liberty Wildlife volunteer Susie Vaught with owl & friends.

Please join Desert Rivers Audubon and Liberty Wildlife for “Rescued Flight: Raptor Rehabilitation,” a presentation including live eagles, owls & hawks, Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 7-8:30pm, Gilbert Community Center, 130 N. Oak St., Gilbert.

The dedicated volunteers of Liberty Wildlife visit with rescued hawks, eagles and owls to demonstrate the resilience and care required of Arizona’s unique birds of prey. The physics of bird flight will be discussed.

This event is part of the 2012 Arizona Science & Technology Festival.

Come early to browse our mobile book shop, visit, and learn about volunteer opportunities with Desert Rivers Audubon including our Burrowing Owl release in Gilbert,  March 31, 2012. Light refreshments served.

Join Desert Rivers Audubon at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch, 2757 E. Guadalupe Road Gilbert, to kick-off the Great Backyard Bird Count, Saturday, February 18, 2012, 8am-12 noon.

Watch birds for at least 15 minutes…

The goal of The Great Backyard Bird Count is to watch birds for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count then enter tallies. Anyone can participate, it’s free, and no registration is required. Participants can count anywhere they wish, not just in backyards, but in neighborhoods, parks, nature centers, or anywhere they see birds.

Wild peach-faced lovebirds

Submit your list…

“This count is so fun because anyone can take part — we all learn and watch birds together — whether you are an expert, novice, or feeder watcher,” said Gary Langham, Audubon’s Chief Scientist. “I like to invite new birders to join me and share the experience. Get involved, invite your friends, and see how your favorite spot stacks up.”

Get some local coaching…

Black-crowned Night Heron

“We’ll be able to coach East Valley residents in their bird identification skills Saturday during our free Family Birdwalk at Gilbert Riparian Preserve, Saturday, February 18, 2012, 8am-noon,” added Eileen Kane, Communications Director, Desert Rivers Audubon Society.

More than 92,000 checklists were submitted during the last GBBC, with more than 11 million individual bird observations. The data help scientists get the big picture about how bird populations may be changing across the continent over time.

…become a Citizen Scientist!

“This is a very detailed snapshot of continental bird-distribution,” said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Imagine scientists 250 years from now being able to compare these data with their own.  Already, with more than a decade of data in hand, the GBBC has documented changes in late-winter bird distributions.”

Earn prizes, too!

The count also includes a photo contest and a prize drawing for participants who enter at least one bird checklist online. The GBBC is hosted each year by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. The Great Backyard Bird Count is made possible in part by sponsor Wild Birds Unlimited.

Bring your Great Backyard Bird Count count sheets into Wild Birds Unlimited of Mesa, AZ & receive 2 lbs. of birdseed!

Northern Saw-whet Owl photographed in March at BTA by Marceline Vandewater.

Join Desert Rivers Audubon at our monthly meeting February 14, 2012 at Gilbert Community Center, 130 N. Oak St., Gilbert, 7pm, for “Love is in the Air” with Paul Wolterbeek of Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Free.  All are welcome!

Valentines Day, means that “Love is in the Air,” but our guest speaker would argue that love is sometimes lurking behind a tree, holding binoculars and a camera, and taking notes.

No, he’s not a creepy stalker or a papparazzo – Paul Wolterbeek is one of those dedicatedstaffers we know & love over at Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Paul coordinates BTA’s volunteer program and also the public event series, arranging guided bird walks and presentations by nature photographers; summer evening concerts and how-to-juice-prickly-pear-cactus-fruit classes.

He’s one of those people who appears to love his job, and has an infectious love of birds, mammals and our Sonoran Desert … and on this evening he will share anecdotes about some of his favorite spots at BTA (maybe even share a few “secret undisclosed location” places nearby for birding, too!), with a slide show of BTA birds photographed by some of the top avian artists we have in AZ: Brendon Grice, Richard Ditch, Cindy Marple.

Paul Wolterbeek with juvenile coopers hawk.

With any luck, Paul’s sweetie (and summertime owl research boss, Amanda) may be here, too; her lively presentation on Mexican Spotted Owls was a highlight of our 2009 speaker series.

This event is part of the 2012 Arizona Science & Technology Festival. 

Come early to browse our mobile book shop, visit, and learn about volunteer opportunities with Desert Rivers Audubon. Light refreshments served.

On December 18th, 2011, I had an opportunity to go to Wickenburg, Arizona for a bird count. Living in Mesa, Arizona, I was expecting

Birding is fun for kids!

to see different species than what I normally see in Mesa. It was about a two hour drive from Mesa to Wickenburg. When I got there, it was different from what I had expected. It was desert habitat. Still, I was likely to see things different from what I see in my yard because my yard isn’t desert habitat.

When we were all there, we split up into two groups then started bird counting. This was my first time going on a bird count. But I knew how it worked. It was basically just counting the number of each individual species in one area. After birding on the trails for a while, we met the other group at a McDonald’s parking lot. Then we started birding in a residential area. The other group was slightly ahead of us. While our group was looking at some phoebes, the other group contacted our group that we were invited at a horse ranch down the street to bird watch. A few minutes later, we were at the ranch. The other group saw a Bendire’s Thrasher. After bird watching at the ranch, we made our count totals and submit them.

By the time we were finished, I was happy that I went because I saw two species for the first time, the Red-Napped Sapsucker, and the Rock Wren. Our group saw a total of 21 species.

Sonoran Desert Monument, Gila Bend, Arizona.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012, 7-8:30pm at the Gilbert Community Center, 130 N. Oak St., Thom Hulen, Executive Director, Friends of the Sonoran Desert Monument, joins Desert Rivers Audubon to speak about the flora, fauna & archaeology found in the Sonoran Desert Monument and the threats these resources face.

Starting his career as a field archaeologist with first the Arizona State University & then Arizona State University, Hulen notes, “As a lifelong resident of Arizona, I have been keenly interested in the natural and cultural history of the Southwest.” Former manager of the Desert Botanical Garden’s Desert House conservation demonstration, Hulen also has a keen interest in what every Arizona resident can do to help preserve our natural and cultural resources.

Come early to browse our mobile book shop, visit, and discover the wide range of volunteer opportunities, including our municipal public Burrowing Owl & Hummingbird habitats, with Desert Rivers. Light refreshments will be provided.

On Saturday, January 7, 2012, Desert Rivers Audubon celebrates five years of free Family Birdwalks at Veterans Oasis Park, 4050 E. Chandler Heights Rd in Chandler. (NE Corner of Chandler Heights and Lindsay Rd.) 8am-noon.  Walks include free loan of binoculars, expert guides and children’s Bird Bingo games. Visit with live hawks, eagles and owls with Liberty Wildlife. This birdwalk is sponsored by Desert Rivers Audubon, The City of Chandler Environmental Education Center, Liberty Wildlife and Bashas Supermarkets.

The recent stories of jaguars and ocelots being spotted in Arizona got me thinking about the historic role that our desert rivers played in wildlife population distribution. My thoughts wandered to the impact the “dang fence” on the border would have in limiting the future distribution of these tropical species back into Arizona. I also got to thinking about how our modern system of canals has come to partially replace the role that our desert rivers historically played in wildlife distribution, especially here in the Gilbert, Chandler, Tempe, and Mesa area.

Jaguar, Panthera onca.

For those that missed the news reports, the Arizona Game and Fish Department confirmed through photographs that a mountain lion hunter treed a jaguar southeast of Tucson.  The Arizona Daily Star also reported that in June a helicopter pilot for Homeland Security spotted a jaguar loping down a forested hillside in the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. Arizona Game & Fish also reported that a further five reports by hunters have been confirmed and the department is now attempting to determine through photographic analysis how many jaguars may be roaming about southern Arizona. The Game & Fish believe that these individuals represent the most northern part of a population of jaguars living in Sonora, Mexico.

We were also recently briefly regaled with the story of a sighting of an ocelot. Upon further analysis, the Game and Fish Department believes that the cat was more likely a serval, or serval hybrid, an African cat popular in the pet trade. However, there were two other confirmed sightings of ocelots earlier in the year, both in the Huachuca Mountains.

These are only the third and fourth reports of ocelots in Arizona since the 1960’s. It was generally agreed by most wildlife observers

Ocelot, Leopardus pardalis, also known as the dwarf leopard or McKenney's wildcat.

that the ocelot was extinct in Arizona until one was found dead along the highway in the Globe area in 2010 and one was photographed in 2009 by a trail camera belonging to the Sky Island Alliance.  There is a small remnant population of ocelots in Texas and the rest of the range was believed to be much farther south in Mexico, but now Arizona has to be added to the list of locations where the species is still holding on to some territory.

Historically, Arizona’s desert rivers have been corridors for wildlife. Although the exact locations of the traditional corridors used by jaguars and ocelots remain uncertain, there is good evidence that the prey species of both cats were originally found in abundance along our desert rivers. For these species to survive, movement corridors need to be maintained. Conservation efforts are crucial as habitat becomes more fragmented and isolated. The Sky Island Alliance is one organization working to maintain the connections north and south of the border through their Wildlife Linkages program.

One threat to the continued efforts to conserve both of these species is the proposed border fence. The Center for Biological Diversity  has been warning of the environmental catastrophe that the border fence would be for wildlife populations for five years. Back in 2006, the Center said:

More border walls, militarization, low-level aircraft and roads would further damage already-stressed wildlife and places, such as the Cactus Pygmy Owl and Sonoran Pronghorn in Arizona, Flat-Tailed Horned Lizard and Peninsular Ranges Bighorn Sheep in California, Jaguar and Mexican Gray Wolves in New Mexico, and the Rio Grande River, Ocelot, and Big Bend National Park in Texas. Triple walls are harmful to wildlife blocking critical migration corridors and destroying valuable habitat. The distance of the triple wall – 370 miles – is approximately the distance of the entire border in Arizona.

With two Arizona desert rivers having their headwaters in Mexico, the border fence will affect wildlife distribution. It seems clear that the northernmost range for the ocelot and jaguar would be cut off from the population in Mexico and stop any natural repopulation of these species in Arizona.

Roosevelt Water Conservation District

Closer to home, our canal system is the wildlife corridor for coyotes and other mammals. In the southeast valley, the four SRP canals (Consolidated, Eastern, Western, & Tempe) plus the Roosevelt Water Conservation District canal are regular coyote corridors. When we add in the Eastern Maricopa Floodway, we have a wildlife corridor that stretches from the San Tan Mountains in the south to the Salt River Recreation Area. So the next time you see a coyote in one of the East Valley riparian areas, or a coyote loping through a southeast valley neighborhood, remind yourself that it is the same mode of transit that wildlife has always used in the southwest: our riparian desert rivers. And, if you want your children and grandchildren to someday see jaguars and ocelots in the wildlands of Arizona, let your opinion be known to our elected officials the next time they start talking about building “the dang fence”.

The British Robin is Erithacus rubecula; American Robin is Turdus migratorius.

If you know anyone from Britain the chances are that, one year or another, you’ll get a Christmas card from them with a Robin on the front. The European Robin is very different from the American Robin, while the American version belongs in the Thrush family the European Robin is a Chat. Only a few inches long these are indomitable birds that seem to have no fear of anyone or anything. Their life style included the search for worms and grubs turned up by pigs in forests. When the forests and the wild pigs disappeared from Britain they turned their attention to the gardens, often following closely as someone dug up the earth. You may remember the robin doing that in the children’s book “The Secret Garden.” Human activity makes them seem curious as they associate us with food sources. Many garden birdwatchers have a Robin “friend” they feed regularly.

Robins are also very conspicuous in winter. This is because Britain, particularly the southern part, gets an influx of Robins from the European continent where the winters are usually harsher and longer. Robins are extremely territorial, even pairs will only share a territory while they are bringing up the nestlings, and they sing all winter long to state their claims. Not only will they sing through the winter but they will sing all day and night until an intruder backs off.

So they were already connected with winter when a sartorial decision by the Royal Mail sealed the connection forever. During the Victorian period when Christmas cards where becoming popular there was, for a time, a uniform worn by the mail deliverers that included a bright red vest (or waistcoat as the British would say). This earned the postmen the nickname “Robin Redbreasts”. Given the English predilection for puns it wasn’t long before a few Christmas cards appeared with Robins holding envelopes in their beaks and the sentiment, “This Robin Redbreast brings you Christmas cheer.”

I expect only about 1 person in five hundred back in Britain knows about this story or even wonders why the Robin is so popular. So I’m not surprised that I haven’t yet had an answer to my question “Why is the Cardinal the Christmas bird in the US – is it just because it’s a red bird that’s seen in the snow?” Maybe there’s someone out there who can tell me all about it.

Greg Clark, Owl Habitat Coordinator for raptor rescue and rehabilitation group Wild At Heart, talked about the struggle to preserve Arizona’s Burrowing Owls,  September 13, 2011, at Desert Rivers Audubon’s monthly meeting.

Burrowing Owl visits Desert Rivers Audubon's September 2011 meeting, photo by Linda Covey.

A Species of Special Concern, Burrowing Owls live their lives largely in underground burrows made by squirrels, coyotes, skunks and other animals. Small and active both day and night, Burrowing Owls are vulnerable to other birds of prey, animals, and construction.

With over 5,000 artificial owl burrows installed throughout Arizona, Greg describds his latest project with Desert Rivers Audubon to install 100 burrows at Zanjero Park, Gilbert. Immediately adjacent to active farmland, Zanjero is an example of the disturbed land on the fringes of suburban areas Burrowing Owls prefer.

Desert Rivers Audubon is organizing volunteers to dig the burrows, 8am-2pm, Saturday, October 29, 2011 at Zanjero Park, 3785 S. Lindsay Road, Lindsay Road, South of Loop 202, Gilbert. In the spring, volunteers will again be needed to feed and care for the owls while they are acclimated to the site and before their release.

The Burrowing Owl Habitat Project is made possible by a grant from Together Green, an initiative by the National Audubon Society and Toyota to fund conservation projects, train environmental leaders, and offer volunteer and individual action opportunities that significantly benefit the environment.

Desert Rivers Audubon and Wild At Heart will also present a technology forum Wednesday, September 28, 2011, as part of the Gangplank Brown Bag Series lunchtime series. Both organizations are seeking advice and brainstorming on social media, mobile technology, and signage to enhance the public’s experience of this Burrowing Owl habitat.

UPDATE (10/24/2011) from Greg Clark:

“Zanjero Park is considered underutilized by the Town of Gilbert. It is designed for use by horses and there is evidence that horse owners do take their horses there for riding. But, it is not used much for that purpose. It has attractive recirculating water features and two well maintained ramadas that are occasionally used at lunch time by office workers. The main trail around the edge of the park is part of a larger trail used mostly by bicycles. This appears to me to be the main use in the park. There is a nice park bench area and plantings in one area in the middle of the trail.

“Because the park is devoid of grass it is not attractive to families with small children looking for a playground. For all these reasons the park doesn’t see much use. But, situated next to farm land, it is perfect for Burrowing Owls. The trail system and park bench would allow easy access to see the owls and small children would not typically be at the park running around and looking for fun opportunities to chase the owls. The low density vegetation will allow the owls good visibility, especially in the large basin area where the release sites are located. 100 burrows are being installed with four release sites.

“Once the owls are present the use of the park will go way up as people go to see the owls up pretty close.

“The close proximity of Campo Verde High School (adjacent to the park) could provide scientific and educational opportunities for the students via monitoring, owl behavior descriptions, pellet comparison studies with other nearby owl sites, and gathering video and still images for web site reports and creative writing.

“I anticipate that one release tent per year would go up for the next 4 years.”

UPDATE (11/14/2011) from Steve Thomas (conact stevepthomas@cox.net to volunteer):

If you missed #OWLDAY, Wild at Heart has another habitat install project, Saturday, November 19, 2011.

“On Nov 19th we will be constructing new homes for burrowing owls at a farm northwest of Gila Bend.  Travel time from Phoenix to the site is approximately 2 hours.

“The 400 new homes, or artificial burrows as they are called, are needed to relocate AZ burrowing owls who have been displaced by development and/or loss of their natural burrows and habitat.

“Building the burrows consists of placing plastic burrow chambers in the ground, connecting flexible access tubes to the chambers and creating ground-level entrances so the owls can get down inside their new home. We expect these new homes will support many families of owls for the next 20 years.

“Children are welcome at the event.  Children ages 10 and up can usually perform any of the tasks; children ages 8-9 can learn some of the more difficult tasks and be good helpers to an adult or teen. Children 4-7 may be able to paint the tubes and help carry supplies back and forth. Children under 4 will need constant supervision to be sure they stay safe.”

Greg Clark, Wild At Heart Burrowing Owl Habitat Coordinator, joins chapter president Krys Hammers and a rescued burrowing owl at Desert Rivers Audubon's September 2011 meeting. Photo by Linda Covey.