A Northern Arizona triple play
by Carl Perretta
On
January 29 I took an overnight trip to an area just south of Page, AZ -
the site of the Glen Canyon dam and Lake Powell. On a steep slope at a
roadside pull-off there were a flock of Rosy-Finches which had been
coming in regularly for about a month and a half. The great majority -
about 50-60 - were Black Rosy-Finches, and in the flock were usually one
or two Gray-crowned Rosy Finches. I hoped to see the birds, which were
about 275 miles north of my base in Scottsdale. I had tried to get them a
few weeks earlier in a one-day back and forth run, but had not been
successful. In fact, I had to cut my trip off early because it started
snowing rather hard. This time, I traveled north with plans to stay the
night in Page. This would give me a brief window to see the finches on
the way up, and as much time as I needed the next day to get two lifers.
I
arrived at the site with not much daylight left on Monday, so I was
going to have to get lucky on Tuesday. After checking into my hotel and
having a dreadful take-out Chinese dinner (see my review at: http://tinyurl.com/y4gysh7o), I turned in for the night to get an early start the next morning.
I
was up before dawn, had the hotel breakfast, and drove to the site,
where the sun was just getting up. It was about 7:15. I threw out some
seed I had brought with me to entice the birds back to their regular
spot, and sat in my car to wait. At around 9 o’clock, I saw a circling
flock of small birds which did not come in, but moved off. I was sure
they were the finches. I got out of the car to wait for their return,
and a man came by, stopped, and strew sunflower seed near the top of the
ridge, where observation would be very easy. The gentleman was a wealth
of information. He told me exactly where to sit and wait, and felt
confident I’d be successful. He then left for work in Page. Sure enough,
at about 9:15, a flock circled and finally lit near the top of the
ridge, close to where I was standing. My first priority was to pick out a
Gray-crowned, in case the birds flew off.
Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch
Most
observers said the birds might stay for 20 minutes or 20 seconds before
flying off. The chap who had stopped to put out the seed said they
seemed to be on about a 40 minute cycle of landing, flying away, and
landing again.
Black Rosy-Finch
After
being satisfied that I had seen a Gray-crowned among the much more
numerous Blacks, I approached a bit and took up my camera. These birds
could not be described as shy. As I wrote in a AZNMBIRDS post, at times I
thought my shoe would appear in some of the pictures I was taking! I
reeled off a series of shots, and after about 12 or 13 minutes, they
flew off.
Satisfied
that I had gotten good looks, I decided to head off for Navajo Bridge -
a span over the Colorado at a place called Marble Gorge. It is a spot
near the Vermillion Cliffs, one of the release sites for the
reintroduction of the California Condor. My earlier visitor was an
experienced birder in the area, and he told my to try standing on the
old bridge and observing the underside of the new bridge, where a family
of condors sometimes roosted. I had the great luck of being there on an
overcast day, when there was essentially no thermal activity and the
birds would probably be earthbound. When I arrived, fortune again smiled
upon me, as the old bridge was where a wildlife biologist from the
Peregrine Fund was observing two roosting birds perched on the girders
of the new bridge, within easy telescope and photo range. This young
woman knew the pedigree of each individual, and informed me that No. 54
(a wing-tagged adult) and a juvenile with him (as yet still untagged)
were parent and child. Furthermore, the youngster had been hatched and
raised naturally in the wild, and was thus a countable bird by ABA
guidelines, unlike the parent who had received human rearing! I had seen
condors some years ago at Big Sur in California, but all were tagged
birds who had been raised with human intervention. It was truly a
satisfying three-lifer day.
Parent Condor (No. 54) and still untagged chick
