What does Birding and Bocce have in common? Well, nothing really. This is my third blog post of the evening and I'm just about done. I thought I would combine this weeks birding with this weeks Bocce results. Hmmmm.... I could also mention this weeks golfing fun. And then there tennis. Oh, we also got a couple of bike rides in this week. Crap! I really want to mention our birding so I'll summarize the rest.
- 1st Bocce match. We lost. Hope to do better next week.
- Golf. 9 holes and breakfast is the way to go. 2 games a week. Birdied back to back holes at Superstition Springs on Thursday. Game is still a work in progress.
- Tennis: I coached for the first time today. The head coach asked me to help the group with serving. I came home happy and the head coach asked me to continue helping out. All good.
- Road and mountain bike rides. Sweet!
Okay, and now results of our latest birding. It has been quite an amazing week for birding. This past week we spotted 3 birds that are very infrequent visitors to this area at this time of year. Fortunately for identification purposes I have good photos of all three birds. It seems that each time we go out we are getting more comfortable with our bird identification abilities. We still defer to the experts (specifically our friend Bud) when there is doubt, but overall we are able to use our references to narrow down the species. We are often surprised, no, thrilled when we get a difficult identification correct. This happened when we made the correct call on the Plumbeous and Cassin's Vireos.
Today was a thrill! I saw my first Zone-tailed Hawk of the year. Dana spotted it yesterday and took me to that location today. Lucky us, it was still in the area. Bonus, I got a good photo of it. I posted it on eBird to let others know that it was spotted as it is considered, at least on eBird as a rare visitor for this time of year.
Other sighting this week include, Wilson's Snipe, Harris's Hawk, House Wren and Black Vulture.
Enjoy the photos! Some bonus photos for you to enjoy.
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| Cassin's Vireo |
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| Plumbeous Vireo |
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| Immature Zone-tailed Hawk at Gilbert Water Ranch |
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| Immature Zone-tailed Hawk (same one as above) |
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| Black Vulture on top of a lamp post on Southern Ave, Mesa, Az. |
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| 2 Avocet at Gilbert |
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| Green Heron, smallest of the Heron Family (18" tall) |
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| This is a reflection of a Great Blue Heron that was standing in one of the ponds at the Gilbert Water Ranch |
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| Wilson's Snipe at Gilbert Water Ranch |
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