By Mel Carriere
I just got back from vacationing in Colorado and New Mexico for a few days, and hopefully the bird blogging business will crank up a notch or two. This little family reunion road trip didn't turn out to be the birding bonanza I was hoping for. There were plenty of barn swallows for everyone and then some - one pair was actually nesting in a hole in the roof above the front porch of the farmhouse where my mother grew up, and the birds got very nervous waiting on a high wire for the old codgers swapping yarns from the past to clear out so they could get about the business of feeding their babes. I'm sure the swallows will have a future family reunion story or two of their own to tell about that one.
I think I was the only one who even noticed the swallows. The codgers just kept on jawing and lying while my soul bled for the anxious parents waiting above - but to my shame I did nothing.
I also saw a Violent-green Swallow perched in a nook of an ancient stone wall at the Quarai ruins, a part of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument just outside of Mountainair, New Mexico. The ruins there are remarkable and if you get off your butt and go right now it might still be green, a temporary blessing that has been visited upon this area after a decade of dismal drought. So there's a plug for the ruins, of which there are actually three in the area, and here's a plug for my ancestral town of Mountainair, which is a fine spot from which to embark upon your ruins exploration, with the single disadvantage that there is not a single drop booze in town unless you break and enter into somebody's private liquor closet. If you do enjoy a nightcap, plan accordingly, and if you elect to stay in Mountainair I highly recommend the Rock Motel. It looks sort of Norman Bates-ish on the outside, but don't be frightened. It is remarkably clean and new where it counts, on the inside. The Ancient Cities Cafe just across the street from the Rock Motel also has wonderful food - great breakfasts, outstanding Mexican fare, and you can conveniently call out for their passable Pizza from the menu in your room at the Rock.
What does my little travelogue here have to do with Says Phoebes? Not much, except to say that if I would have just gone ahead and brought my own neighborhood birds with me they would have felt right at home there on our old family farm south of Mountainair. With the exception of a single Juniper Titmouse making himself at home in one of his namesake shrubs, the birds I saw were the same ones I have seen time and again in my current San Diego neighborhood.
The barn swallows I mentioned before are not exactly common in San Diego, and tend to get lost in the swirling flocks of our signature Cliff Swallows, but if you look closely into the midst of such an aerial assemblage long enough you will spot a forked tail or two. Their cousins the Violet-greens are also common up on Cuyamaca Peak, about an hour and a half from where I live.
Another bird I could have just packed into my suitcase, TSA permitting of course, is the Mockingbird, which carves out its territory in the open fields between the New Mexico Junipers just as it defines its dominion in the open spaces between our Queen Palms and Sweet Gums back in San Diego. I could see the distinctive white wing flashes of the Mockers as they flitted between fence posts, and at one point I spotted a pair tenaciously harrying a crow, also a sight I could have seen from my front porch in San Diego and kept the $119 plane fare in my pocket to boot, with which I could have bought a couple six packs of that elusive beer that disappeared from Mountainair along with the indigenous Tiwa Indians of the Salinas Pueblos, sometime in the 1600s I think.
There were also enough Says Phoebes out there on the farm to munch the house flies in my yard to extinction. Fortunately, if you are a Musca domestica, there were sufficient flies in Mountainair's Pinyon-Juniper biosphere to harass a herd of buffalo over the edge of a cliff, so the Phoebes didn't seem to be lacking for food. A Phoebe joined the swallows by nesting in the farmhouse roof, but did it a more remote corner where its activities seemed to be unhindered by human interference. Again, I could have stayed home and watched Says Phoebes nesting. Well, maybe not, my neighbor's cat seems to have extirpated them from my particular neighborhood just lately, another drawback of suburban birding. Luckily, these Phoebes get around, and just like we prodigal sons, they always head back to the farm sooner or later, where there is enough open space to avoid feline deprivations.
So my New Mexico trip wasn't much of a bird Safari, but a change of scenery is always delightful, and I'll take a day sitting on a porch with a favorite Uncle or Aunt, watching a Phoebe dive bombing for bugs over a Southern California traffic jam any day.
Photo By Sayornis_saya_5.jpg: Linda Tanner from Los Osos, California, U.S.A. derivative work: Berichard (Sayornis_saya_5.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive. I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.
