Articles

Nov 13 2015

Madera Canyon and Santa Rita Lodge in the “off-season”

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Phot of magnificent hummingbird

A male Magnificent Hummingbird soaking up some rays at Santa Rita Lodge.

May 7th.  It always within a day or two of May 7th when the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird shows up in our yard. While there are no confirmed breeding records in far southeastern South Dakota, there’s little doubt they nest there. I have birds in my yard all summer, and by July sometime I start to see immature birds. After a great (but short!) summer flitting about our yard, they’re gone by the end of September. That’s less than 5 months, with the “hummingbird off season” consisting of 7+ months of cold weather and absolutely zero hummingbirds.

It’s the “hummingbird off-season” where I am this week, in Tucson.  After peaking in August here, where up to 15 hummingbird species may be sighted, numbers and variety start to dwindle. By this time in November the slow season is definitely underway. There’s just a WEE bit of a difference in the Tucson off season compared to South Dakota. Here in the Tucson area, you can still find plenty of hummingbirds, but “only” 4-5 kinds (typically).

Photo of Costa's Hummingbird.

A male Costa’s Hummingbird, not commonly found at Madera Canyon in the winter.

There are some extremely famous hummingbird locales that attract birders from across the world. Madera Canyon south of Tucson is world famous for many birds, but it’s the hummingbird feeders at Santa Rita Lodge that are the big attraction for many. In the non-work part of my trip I twice visited Madera and Santa Rita Lodge, and I’d be hard pressed to call it the “off-season”. No, there were no Plain-capped Starthroats, Violet-crowned Hummingbirds, or other U.S. mega-rarities that make southern Arizona famous. For the week I “only” saw and photographed five different species, with all five being seen at Santa Rita Lodge (and some species also found elsewhere).

From a photographers standpoint it’s really nice taking photos at Santa Rita Lodge. Until 1:00 or so you have the sun at your back, and most of the feeders are out in the sunlight, making it easy to get beautiful photos of hummingbirds with their gorgets “lit-up”. The ever-present Mexican Jays, Bridled Titmouse, and Wild Turkeys are there to entertain, and you never know what might show up to feed on the suet, fruit, and seeds that are also available. Hepatic Tanagers have an extremely limited U.S. range, but they are pretty reliable in Madera Canyon. Despite it also being the “off-season” for them, I did find a pair at Santa Rita Lodge and was able to add the species to my life list.

Hepatic Tanager

Hepatic Tanager, a southern Arizona specialty.

Santa Rita Lodge is also the only place I have ever found Arizona Woodpeckers. Acorn Woodpeckers are also always around, while the Niger seed feeders typically have a bunch of Lesser Goldfinch and Pine Siskins. Checking the trees around the feeders can reveal all kinds of interesting songbirds, and even in this slow season, I saw Black-throated Gray Warblers, Hutton’s Vireo, Yellow-rumps Warblers, and more. I also got a nice surprise by standing by the one big berry-laden bush in font of the feeders.  A Red-naped Sapsucker flew in and landed literally 2 feet in front of me and started feeding on the berries. A newcomer to the Santa Rita Lodge, a pair of Canyon Wrens started nesting under the building recently, despite the uncharacteristic habitat

Not a bad “off-season” visit!  And this doesn’t even touch on the Elegant Trogon or other birds you can find in the Canyon.

I enjoyed birding this week all around the Tucson area, but in terms of “birdy-ness”, nothing beats a trip to Madera Canyon and Santa Rita Lodge.

Photo of Canyon WrenRed-naped SapsuckerBroad-tailed Hummingbird

Sep 04 2015

Playing “Jenga” with nature

Author: DakotaBirder • Discussion: No Comments
Ecosystems are like the game of Jenga...take one piece away you don't know what will happen.

Ecosystems are like the game of Jenga…take one piece away you don’t know what will happen.

You never know what will happen when you remove one piece of the puzzle.  Can it survive for a little while longer, albeit in a weakened state?  Or will it all come crashing down when that one piece gets removed?

Yes, I could be talking about the game of “Jenga”, something many of us have played.  But in this case I’m talking about nature.  In the journal Science Advances, research was just published that discusses a link between hawk populations in the southwestern U.S. and breeding success of Black-chinned Hummingbirds.  One wouldn’t immediately think there was much of a link between the two species.  Hummingbirds are far too small and quick for most hawk species to deal with.  They likely couldn’t capture them, and even if they did, they wouldn’t be more than a mouthful.  So how are the species linked?

As the paper discusses, there are actually three bird species who interact to affect nesting success of the hummingbird.  In addition to the Black-chinned Hummingbird, the study looked at Cooper’s Hawks and Mexican Jays.  What they found was that nesting success was much higher for the hummingbirds when they nested very close to Cooper’s Hawk nests.  The Cooper’s Hawks don’t feed on the hummingbirds, but they ARE a threat to Mexican Jays, and Mexican Jays will readily eat hummingbird eggs and young if they get a chance.  In one case, after Cooper’s Hawks left one nesting location, the researchers immediately saw Mexican Jays move in and decimate all hummingbird nests in the area.

Jenga…ala Mother Nature.  That’s what so scary when human beings start to interfere in natural systems.  One of the most publicized impacts of the removal of one species from a system is the Yellowstone ecosystem, before and after the reintroduction of wolves.  It was expected that the reintroduction would impact ungulate populations in the area, but it soon became apparent just how far-reaching an impact wolves have on the ecosystem.  Without wolves, elk and deer browsed freely in lowlands, resulting in nearly all young aspen trees to be browsed to the ground.  Aspen habitat all but disappeared in the park, but with the reintroduction of wolves, that habitat is now being reborn.  With increased aspen came more beavers.  With more aspen habitat and beaver ponds came an influx of more songbirds and other species that use those habitat.  With more wolves, there were fewer coyotes, which meant more small mammals and an increase in numbers of red fox, eagles, and ravens.

All due to the removal of one species.

Be it hawks in the Southwest or wolves in Yellowstone, the removal of one key species can have cascading impacts on the entire ecosystem.  The same certainly can be true in the “reverse” case, where a new, exotic species is introduced into the system.  As a scientist, it’s fascinating to see the incredible impacts humans have on ecosystems, both through how they manage the landscape, and in how they manage the wildlife within that landscape. As just a human being…it also can be pretty depressing to see how we negatively impact so many ecosystems.

%d bloggers like this: