Mad AZ Monk

Saw What?

Well. Yesterday was a royally crappy day. My two birding buddies, aware of this, insisted that I must drive up to the San Francisco Peaks for an evening of owling. Grumbling and cranky, I agreed.

The Peaks, towering above Flagstaff, are dominated by Mount Humphreys, which is the sacred western mountain of the Navajo and Hopi, soaring well over 12,000'. Ponderosa forest gives way to mixed pine, aspen and alpine meadow until finally the tree line gives way at about 11,800'. It is one of the only places in Arizona to find Blue Grouse, Clark's Nutcracker, Three-toed Woodpecker and Golden-crowned Kinglet.

But our target was Northern Saw-whet Owl. We were aided by a bright quarter moon and complete absence of wind. I had never seen nor heard a saw-whet before but, based on my friends' accurate imitation, found that one started calling just at twilight in a grove near us.

We pursued, but the ground was so crunchy with leaves and twigs, we spooked it and it flew deeper into the forest. Thus began a stealthy hunt for the next 90 minutes or so. Time seemed to fly by. We were quite focused; the woods were so silent, save the insistent call of the saw-whet.

We finally narrowed our hunt to one tree and creeped in. The bugger perched quite high, but no longer seemed spooked. Both of my friends were catching eyeshine, but I couldn't locate it. Then, boom, there it was, posed briefly in full view on an exposed branch before taking off. Yowza.

During our pursuit, and on the way back to the car, we also heard several Flammulated Owls. We tried to light one up, but it was nestled too far back in dense pine branches.

This morning, I entered the rest of my Arizona sightings in the AviSys database. By my written records, the saw-whet should have been #298, but as with my life list, it was quite flawed. Turns out, the owl was AZ bird #306 and lifer #414!

My thanx to Birding Buddies Tom and John for truly brightening an otherwise dreary day.