March 30, 2017
Peregrine Falcon
Peregrine Falcon
I know I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, but real birders don’t sleep in.  What’s lost in the poetic descriptions of Arizona’s famous sunsets is the fact that Arizona’s sunrises are their equal, and the latter come without the distractions of noise pollution and workday fatigue.  Nothing and nobody is about at first light except birds and birders.

At my favorite Power Spot, dawn’s first kiss arises over the Superstitions.  It seems only last week it made its appearance farther south over the Santans but, with apologies to Journey, the wheel in the sky keeps on turning as winter cedes its mornings to spring.  Skeins of dark cormorants rend the purple velvet above the Supes.  A flicker voices its “Clear!” call in vain attempt to abrogate the cloud bank on the western horizon portending the next weather front from California.  Down the hill I hear the gnatcatchers, the desert busybodies, beginning their breakfast rounds.

Just as the sun breaks free over purple velvet, it is smothered by the next band of clouds, turning them for their trouble into puffs of mauve and golden cotton.  The Peregrine comes in swiftly, unexpectedly, rowing the still dark northern sky with its telltale stiff-strong wingbeats.  It circles the highest utility pole, lands, preens, surveys the breakfast menu along the canal below—duck, dove, pigeon, sparrow, perhaps the flicker.

The Osprey in the snag along the entrance road is up now, circling the pond.  Did it overnight here?  Is it a passage bird or a resident somewhere along the Salt?  Hawk migration will soon begin, and this string of buttes running north/south through the center of the Valley serves wandering raptors as a corridor of sorts when morning’s east winds create updrafts along the eastern faces.  The Osprey banks, kites, dives twice, the outcome hidden from view by trees surrounding the water, then rises preyless and drifts off toward the northwest horizon.

As the low sun, intermittent now in its struggle with the clouds, begins to warm me, the desert, and the cliffs around me, I feel the east wind against my collar.  I watch the Peregrine make desultory (for a Peregrine) sorties out over the canal, then one serious stoop into the adjoining neighborhood greenery.  Desert birds of every persuasion explode suddenly, violently, in every direction, but the marauder comes up empty and wings southbound toward the river.  In the gathering light, it passes at eye level close enough I see the vertical streaks of chocolate hearts and chevrons, a young falcon just learning the predation trade.

The wind rises, gusting now.  A flash of brown shears my peripheral vision, intersects the huge red wall at my back, ascends the tapering stalactites of whitewash, then in an aerial maneuver not visually credible, flips again to horizontal and disappears over the top.  An instant later this urban wraith, Prairie Falcon, returns, cuts the east wind, climbs, and this time settles on a ledge high above me, surveying its own Power Spot.

I smile to myself, happy to be a birder, happy to have welcomed another late winter desert day.
Prairie Falcon adult
Prairie Falcon adult