Chasing LBJs and Other Fall Fun

We are cycling into Fall mode. Birds are moving, leaves are turning and harvest festivals are…festing!? Oh well, you know what I mean.

Chasing LBJs (a technical birding term meaning Little Brown Jobs)

Even though the hummingbirds have been migrating through since late July, there are still some late travelers. I haven’t seen a Rufous hummer in weeks—and you definitely don’t miss those aggressive guys. Today, I saw a diminutive female calliope hummer darting through the junipers outside the kitchen window and I occasionally still hear the trill of the broadtailed hummer’s tail. But all the hummers are just about gone. It is getting cool up here and will be cool as well on the sky islands on which bounty and water they must rely as they traverse the deserts on their way to their winter grounds; cool translates to megaenergy consumption for these few-ounce creatures.

Several flocks of verrrry small sparrows have moved into the neighborhood as the grasses have put out their seed heads. I can’t get a fix on them – they are so small and move so quickly, and they look like a combination of 3 species but not enough like any one! When I walk Nutmeg, they are skulking in the grass along the edge of the roadway, and they scatter like blown leaves when we get within 2 feet, startling Nutmeg and out-quicking my ability to get my binocs to my eyes and focus. I have seen and identified several fall warblers moving through in ones and twos. Such a treat to catch a glimpse of yellow, track it down and then find its image in my Sibley’s when I get home. But there are others – oh, the category “confusing fall warblers” is aptly named in the bird guide. Isn’t it true that at most conferences, it is de rigueur for attendees to wear name badges for easy identification. Why not at these migration conferences: “Hi My Name Is…Mr. Wilson Warbler.”

I was treated to a spectacular hawk display one late afternoon last week as I sat on the back patio. I watched first one, then two hawks and several ravens conduct their avian version of the Firebird across the sky. Act 1 of the ballet: one hawk was being teased by the ravens – diving, swooping, darting in, toward and around the hawk as all circled on the stage overhead. Act 2: the second hawk appeared, the ravens became the supporting cast and the two hawks took center stage. On a pass, the two were flying in Blue Angels formation: one off the wingtip, slightly behind and slightly above the other. On the next pass: one dancer above dove down and under, barrel-rolling underneath its partner and dropping away. Pass number three: again, one partner diving below and turning belly-up while the partner above dropped its talons, the extension of the talons clear against the blue sky-curtain background. What kind of hawks? Who knows…and who cares! The Firebird ballet concluded with the hawks breaking apart and exiting stage right and stage left, each with its own raven chorus.

On Saturday, we went over to the Mimbres Valley for the harvest festival and drove home on the Trail of the Mountain Spirit, which took us through the Gila over the mountains to Pinos Altos. We skirted the upper-most edge of the Mimbres Valley, winding through the ponderosa pines but with a view across an achingly-beautiful valley floor of grasses, stream beds, the river itself and a clear blue ceiling above. My attention was caught by the movement of several large birds flying flat-winged. Dihedral wing shape almost invariably means vulture, but flat-winged…it was worth a look. So I stopped the car almost in the middle of the road and climbed out – you can do stuff like that here without the likelihood of holding up the one-car-per-20-minute traffic. There were 4 or 5 hawks soaring communally above. I don’t think I’ve seen that many coasting the currents together before. As far as I recall, I’ve seen no more than two, usually a mated or courting pair. But here they were making the best of the warm currents flowing between the ridges. Too far away to ID. But again, it didn’t matter. I can get obsessed with reducing the magic to a lifelist notation. But it’s the magic, not the notation, that is sustenance.

And Other Fall Fun

So I mentioned the Mimbres Fall Harvest Festival. Small but fun. Attended an interesting presentation on rain-water harvesting for gardening. We want to set up a rain-water harvesting system when we build, not just for gardening, but also to provide some household water as backup to the city water we will tap. Among the numbers of vendors – well, better to say, among the several vendors (!) was a booth for the new winery that just opened in the Valley. They have been at Silver City’s farmers market selling wine jellies, but they are now launching their wines. They can’t serve the wines at the festival for obvious reasons, but what they can do –and did – was to bring baskets of their wine grapes. No, I didn’t jump into a barrel and crush my own vintage. But I did get to sample the raw source of their pinot noir, merlot and cabernet franc. I was also encouraged to taste a golden grape that instantly took me back to fall in South Carolina at my grandparents: scuppernong grapes!! These weren’t scuppernongs; they were a golden variety out of upstate NY. But if I had been blindfolded and asked to source a memory… Interestingly, when the name, scuppernong, popped involuntarily out of my mouth, the owner said it was the second time he’d heard that, that day. I must not be the only southerner around. By the way, did you know that New Mexico was the first, um, not-state in the Union to grow wine grapes and make wine? The Spanish priest-explorer-missionaries brought wine grapes to this Mexican-Indian territory when they first arrived. The modern-day vintner met on Sunday will have reds for tasting and sale in time, he thinks, for the holidays. Not as cheap as Yellowtail, but a bottle or two will be a nice treat.

And, the arts season is getting underway. Oklahoma! will be presented this weekend, with a local cast. What is fun for me to anticipate is that we now know a number of the performers. Where last fall, we were newbies and enjoyed discovering the local performance landscape, now we have friends and acquaintances up on stage that we can root for, applaud for, and cringe for in case of an off note or flubbed line!

Fall is definitely here. The cottonwoods are beginning to go gold and as we came across the mountains on Saturday, we saw an understory full of blazing-red sumac. The monsoons have passed into the lore of 2009 and have left us with skies reminiscent of many western-themed songs – not a cloud and blues ranging from indigo to robins’ eggs. We arrived in Silver City in November 2008, so we have seen the back-half of fall. Now we are enjoying it in full measure. I wonder what Indian Summer is like, here?