Cruising the Arroyo

A cold front came through over night and the weather went from sunny to overcast. I took a light jacket in case it rained some more on the boat. I was beginning to recognize faces from the previous field trips. It is always nice to make new friends along the way.

Each trip seems to have had a predominant bird. And for the Arroyo Colorado, it has to be the Night Crowned Heron. I've never seen so many in one are before. It was not uncommon to pass a tree with 3 or 4 in the tree. And there were the juveniles.

The first part of the trip was upstream. Numerous blue herons, snowy egrets, great egrets, ringed kingfishers, belted kingfishers, green kingfishers, a kiskadee, a northern harrier, numerous osprey were among the birds we saw. The upper part of the arroyo is lined with short cliffs with various trees growing both along the cliff and on the top of the bank. When we turned and began heading toward the bay, the vegetation changed dramatically. The soil got much sandier, and the plants much shorter with more native palms and yuccas. We could see the mouth where the river empties into the bay. There was a salt marsh where we saw northern shovelers, and other duck like birds.

The highlight of the day was near where the arroyo empties into the bay. One of our eagle eyed guides spotted a peregrin falcon. I think it was in flight when he first spotted it. Then it landed on the sand. I kept trying to get a lead on where it was, because I had never seen one in the wild. Finally I located it in the sand. I followed it as it took to the air. There was another dark bird and they were on a collision course. Because I've seen a lot of crows trying to attack eagles, my first thought was "bird fight." But what was actually unfolding in front of my eyes was amazing to watch. The peregrin falcon was attacking a coot in flight. The falcon caught him with those powerful talons and quickly brought him down to the sand for his meal. Everyone on the boat witnessed this incredible drama.

Our guides on this trip were especially good at spotting the birds and making sure that everyone was able to find them in their binoculars. What really amazes me is how these expert birders can see a bird that is far in the distance - sometimes in the air, sometimes on the ground - and make an accurate identification. That initial peregrin sighting is a case in point. Our guide picked out that peregrin from quite a distance. It took him a moment or two to relocate him and finalize the id.

I'm a long way from being able to identify birds that quickly. I'm learning that some of this instant recognition has to do with relative size, some of it with the way the bird flaps its wings, some in the silhouette, and some of it is behavioral, and some of it is based upon where the bird is. Trying to figure out in my mind how some of these birders have acquired this amazing ability, I realized that some of it is a memory process, some of it involves a lot of time in the field actually watching the birds (spending time with people who know their birds speeds this process up), and some of it is spending a lot of time in the field guides studying the information about the various birds.