The Gila River Christmas Bird Count

 Today on December 15th, I participated in another Christmas Bird Count, with this one being the Gila River CBC which is southwest of Phoenix and in the Buckeye, Palo Verde, and Arlington Area.  My teammates for a second straight year were Ronnie Reed, Adrian Smith, Dara Vazquez, and Jeff Ritz.  Jeff is our group leader, and he has been the leader for this area of the CBC for the last 5 years.  Our stretch of the Gila River went from just north of the Arlington Wildlife Area to just south of Gillespie Dam.  Every year it has turned out to be a productive area with good avian diversity, and we have a good team too!

My spot to start the day off has been Arlington Wildlife Area the last several years, and this year was no different.  Adrian and Ronnie joined me for birding this location.  Jeff and Dara covered the area south of us near Gillespie Dam, and their morning time at the immediate area of the dam was limited due to the dam being closed for half of the day.  At Arlington, Ronnie, Adrian, and I really started birding at around 8 A.M.  For the first 30-40 minutes we watched for birds taking flight in the morning, which helped us get most of the 76 Sandhill Cranes that we detected for the day.  We hiked the entire area of Arlington Wildlife Area, which included tamarisk stands, the fields, and the marsh and ponds.  Highlights we detected among 57 species in over 6 hours was 22 Green-winged Teal, a flyover Ruddy Duck, 8 Common Ground-Doves, 3 Virginia Rail, 4 Sora, 6 American White Pelican, Least Bittern, 36 Black Vulture, Ferruginous Hawk, 2 Prairie Falcon, 3 Crissal Thrasher, 17 Hermit Thrush, 3 American Robin, a nice tan-striped adult White-throated Sparrow, 2 Green-tailed Towhee, and in morning flight at least 700 Brewer's Blackbirds flying north.  Full eBird list at this link here:  https://ebird.org/checklist/S124034100

Common Ground-Dove

Sandhill Cranes

Ferruginous Hawk

Prairie Falcon

Hermit Thrush

For the remainder of the day, we checked spots south of Arlington Wildlife Area and a few spots south of Gillespie Dam once it opened up again.  At a spot just south of the dam, there's good Sage Sparrow habitat.  We were able to find several Sagebrush Sparrows and at least one Bell's Sparrow.  Always fun to look for these sparrows.



To close the day, we went back to Arlington Wildlife Area to look for owls.  We've had fun doing this for the past few years, and in 2020 we had a Short-eared Owl among many Barn Owls and a few Great Horned.  Last year we had lots of Barn Owls and a Great Horned.  This year was interesting as we weren't able to detect any owls.  Wow.  It was a fun day, and our team tallied 96 species for our area.

Sagebrush Sparrows