Home Patch--A birding site within fifteen minutes of home where a birder goes often and can get to quickly, becoming thoroughly familiar with the seasonality, plumages, and behavior of the local birds. Usually it's a park, greenbelt, or desert wash, but it could be your back yard.
My home patch is a city park, fairly large, with three small lakes and a series of canals through open desert with a few Saguaros and two rocky buttes. The mix of birds is typical low desert--Anna's Hummingbird, Gilded Flicker, Verdin, Cactus Wren, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, and Curve-billed Thrasher. Summer brings White-winged Doves and Ash-throated Flycatchers, and cold weather brings Northern Pintails and Ring-necked Ducks to the lakes, and an occasional Osprey on patrol. Once I had a flyover Bald Eagle.
Today I realize the "killers" are back for the winter too. Accipiters (acCIPiters or asips) are slim woodland hawks with short, rounded wings and long tails evolved to give them great maneuverability through trees. Their overhead flight jizz is flap, flap, gliiiiide, flap, flap, gliiiiide. There are three asip species in North America, all found in Arizona--Northern Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, and Sharp-shinned Hawk. They do not breed in our low deserts, but the latter two follow prey species to warmer temperatures and are often seen hanging around residential areas with bird feeders in winter.
The first one flushes up from a canal bank as I crest a small rise--large, square head (Cooper's), quite a large bird for an accipiter (female), horizontal rufous barring across breast, belly, and leggings (adult) and flies into a huge Salt Cedar. This is as close as I have ever been to an adult asip (juveniles are usually much less wary), but it is shrouded by overhanging limbs. Thinking it odd for an asip to have been down on the ground, I look for a kill by the water, but find nothing. Suddenly the bird flushes, chased by another hawk, an asip its own size (Cooper's) with vertical chocolate streaking down breast and belly (juvenile).
The chase breaks off and the adult returns to the same perch. Odd, again, for an adult Coop to return to the same perch with me so close. I have a hunch. I back away slowly. At twenty yards the hawk confirms my suspicions, drops into the shallow water of canal, stares at me, minutes it seems while I hold my breath, then begins to bathe. I exhale and reach slowly for the shutter release. The bird is spraying water everywhere. I have a front row seat for a play most birders will never see.
If accipiters around city parks and backyard feeders this time of year are like kids in a candy store, then imagine the local birds with two accipiters around. They become church mice--unheard, unseen, lying low. Now I know why. Every serious birder needs a home patch where, with observation over time, the unexpected becomes understood.