A melange today: birds, landscapes—and a cobra!

First we have some lovely bird photos from Pete Moulton:

Unfortunately, my plans to get out and make some new images for you over the holiday weekend didn’t work out very well, so these are mainly somewhat older images that I had stashed in the sock drawer, as one of my photo buddies terms her archived material. There’s a little bit of a theme here because I’ve been thinking about a post biogeographer Alan de Queiroz published at his website, The Monkey’s Voyage, back in August. Alan’s post concerned the ‘New Nature’ expressed by naturalist/science writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt, as opposed to the more hardcore pro-conservation ideas of EO Wilson and others, and specifically dealt with the issue of introduced birds. Rather than rehashing the entire post, though, I’ll just give you the link because Alan’s a far more gifted writer than I am.

But I’ve come to realize that the issue isn’t strictly one of introduced vs native species; what about those species which once occurred natively in a particular region in small numbers, but which have increased along with–often because of–human activity? Surely those must count as ‘introduced’ in some sense too. So, here are some of the species which have increased in, or expanded into, the Phoenix area along with, and often because of, human development.

Surface water’s always prime real estate for both birds and humans. Some people like to fish, and now ponds and lakes exist where none did before. That’s increased our local population of Pied-billed Grebes Podilymbus podiceps, which are so water-adapted that they can hardly walk on land. This is one in its breeding colors last June at Papago Park. He’s the boss of the pond, and all the other birds know it.

And, of course, we must have a Green Heron (Butorides virescens), just because. Under normal circumstances, Green Herons are fairly secretive, but at the Phoenix area parks they’ve become reasonably acclimated to humans, which makes them stellar photo subjects. This one wanted to primp a little before sitting for its portrait.

The water attracts other herons too. This one’s an adult Snowy Egret, Egretta thula.

And, now to the poster children for this effect. This one’s a male Anna’s Hummingbird, Calypte anna. Before about 1960, Anna’s was a sparse migrant and winter visitor in Arizona, but with the development of the Phoenix area and the proliferation of backyard hummingbird feeders, it’s become our default hummingbird throughout the year. This increase has come at the expense of two other local species, the congeneric Costa’s Hummingbird C. costae and the Black-chinned Hummingbird Archilochus alexandri, because the Anna’s maintain territories year-round and get all the best spots for feeding and nesting, while the Costa’s and Black-chinneds only come in for the nesting season, and get marginalized to suboptimal areas.

And the Neotropic Cormorant Phalacrocorax brasilianus. When I moved to Phoenix in the mid-1980s Neotropics were quite uncommon in Arizona, and usually necessitated long trips to Painted Rock dam or Patagonia Lake on the off-chance of seeing one. Nowadays, this is the default cormorant at a number of locations around Phoenix and its suburbs, and the overall population is about equal to that of the Double-crested Cormorant P. auritus. To be fair about this, global climate change most likely has a lot to do with the Neotropic’s expansion into Arizona, as NW Mexico is suffering a drought even more severe than ours, and many of the Neotropic’s customary habitats in Sonora dried up just as humans were creating habitat for them in Arizona. The expansion isn’t finished yet, and Neotropics are now being found in southern Nevada and eastern Colorado.

I drove The Beast to Stanley and back yesterday, to open the cabin. Discovered that the tiny windshield wipers sort-of work when I hit a thunderstorm coming back. A fellow Cobra fan recommends Rain Shield and go faster.

Also, a colorful sunset this evening.