April 6, 2023
Looking down on a Bald Eagle
Looking down on a Bald Eagle
Let me start this long and singular paragraph, a paean to birding on the Salt River, by recommending a climb to the top of Coon Bluff, a rocky scramble to be sure but not a “technical” climb at all, for the unique opportunity to look down upon a Bald Eagle floating below, above the river, on an updraft rising against the vertical north face of the bluff, but this adventure might also include ravens cavorting joyously at eye level, locking talons, playing ‘drop and catch’ with a small branch, or streaming by in rowdy single file, a black river complementing the gleaming, riffled water far below, these nature’s undertakers cackling and croaking, of course, in their strange, hoarse communications, or you might just want to hike down to a gravel bar at Goldfield on the off chance the juvenile Peregrine I’ve seen bathing amongst the boulders there is hunting for breakfast, scattering the winter flocks of Common Mergansers on whistling wings past a Bobcat splashing through the shallows to the far side as a pack of Coyotes howl in the distance, but if you’re a morning person and sunrises are your thing, you could enjoy a Belted Kingfisher rattling through the sinuous curves of the Salt at Phon Sutton as the sun breaks over Stewart Mountain and ameliorates a frosty dawn where I once encountered a Northern Raccoon, which I whimsically named “Rocky,” as he paused, leaned against a Mesquite, and pondered what strange two-legged creature would be in his domain at that hour, an hour when Desert Bighorns often appear along the ridgetop at Sheep Crossing above Spotted Sandpipers and Northern River Otters plying the shimmering pool at the base of the cliffs beneath a promontory where a Great Blue Heron often perches in the first sunshaft of the day, or if you’re a birder because the thrill of discovery is the most exciting aspect of your passion, you will probably prefer the extensive Mesquite bosque at the big jog in the river at Granite Reef, a well-recognized migrant trap, particularly in August and September, the calendar window in which I found my very first Arizona Painted Bunting, many a vagrant Eastern warbler has been found, and some of our less common Sonoran Desert residents such as Greater Roadrunner, Crissal Thrasher, and Northern Cardinal are regularly seen, although at any season you should see one of the Salt’s signature specialty species, the beautiful and graceful Phainopepla, our so-called “desert cardinal,” the spectacular black male rocking its white wing patches and scarlet eye as it goes about propagating the mistletoe throughout the washes and upland benches of the desert where I occasionally encounter rattlesnakes and once saw the carcass of a Ringtail, Arizona’s state mammal by the way, hanging from the upper reaches of a Giant Saguaro, undoubtedly left there by a Great Horned Owl after its seldom-if-ever-seen dining experience, which recalls to mind another adventure many years ago on which I took a non-birding acquaintance for that climb up Coon Bluff to fulfill his life’s dream to see a Great Horned Owl nest, something I had discovered in one of the rocky caves near the top of the south side of the cliff, two fuzzy white owlets watched over by a parent, this memory bringing us full circle to the plethora of wildlife sightings possible along what may be the most beautiful natural area in The Valley, although I won’t divulge exactly the place where I watched an adult Bald Eagle haul a ten pound carp from the Salt River during one spring nesting season.

I hope you appreciate what I’ve done here.  I’ve begun and ended a one sentence paragraph about my favorite Phoenix birding area with Bald Eagle, the main draw for most birders and any lover of our country’s megafauna, and I’ve done it all without once using any of these words—summer, people, horse, tube, trash, or bacteria.  Enjoy responsibly!
Bald Eagle with Carp
Bald Eagle with Carp