Getting Two Lifer’s in One Day!

Heather and Peter
Rusty Blackbird
Sunday Peter and I took my niece, Heather, to Phoenix to attend a conference.  We wanted to show her some of the natural beauty of our area.  Saturday we toured her around the Prescott lakes, introduced her to birding and later shopped on Whiskey Row.  Sunday we stopped in Anthem hoping to see the Rusty Blackbird, a rarity in Arizona and a lifer for Peter and I. We had been to the community lake three times before hoping to add this to our life list and this time we saw it!  Looking for one bird of a kind is always a challenge and it helped to have three pair of eyes.


Then we went to Tempe Town Lake because there was a Red-necked Grebe sighted and that also would be a lifer for me.  Tempe Town Lake is a beautiful community center.  In fact, there were three major events happening on the weekend.  We just wanted to stand on the pedestrian bridge to look for the one Red-necked Grebe! 

Red-necked Grebe

Fortunately Peter took his scope and I had my 400mm camera lens because the birds were far away . And yes we saw him.  You can feel a vibration on the bridge as people walk so picture taking is tricky!  I would have liked a little better focus in the pictures but…..

Western Grebe
There were also Western Grebes elegant with their long necks and Double-crested Cormorants drying their wings as they swam. 
Beautiful weather with a picnic later.  This is a great place to visit and bird.  We even saw a Brown Pelican flying!By the afternoon, Heather was proficient using the binoculars and learning to look for movement and detail around her.  We are hoping she does this again when she gets home to Iowa!  She has a great start for her life list!
 
 Lifer = First time a bird species is seen in nature and identified 
Life List = The total bird species seen and identified


Brown Pelican
Labels:
Location: 529 E Gilbert Dr, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I began to really understand the technique of viking knit.  Loo
Read more

Spring Do-Over Challenge

Image
Re-do of Original Pieces Plus My Art Beads  I’m hooked!  The Do-Over Challenge that Jeannie Dukic ‘JKD Studio’ www.jkdjewelry.com offers has become something I look forward to.  Jeannie sends pieces of her ‘old’ jewelry to those of us who sign up and we get to create something new from them.  It does not matter if we like the piece she sends because we take it apart, add beads from our stash and create a completely new piece.  It’s a great way to recycle. Original Necklace and earrings When I received my piece to re-create, it lay on my bead try for a while as I sorted through the possibilities.  There were 3 art beads that might work but only one yelled, “Me!  Take me!”  Fortunately I had more of the polymer cane that was used for that bead because I wanted smaller one to go with the big chosen art bead.  The green chips were to be filler beads highlighting my art beads.  Large 'Take Me!' bead! I made two pair of earrings.  One pair could be part of
Read more

The Draw of the Mojave Desert or Why I Started Designing Jewelry

Image
When you look at my etsy stores you see Mojave Stone jewelry .  In the 1970's, my father and two brothers mined a stone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of nowhere California!  Actually, the mine was somewhat but not very close to Desert Center.  It had been a gold/silver mine before they staked their claim and began mining stone.  My family lived in Missouri and the stone had to be trucked from the desert after strip mining it.  I was married and away from home so I got to hear the stories of making a road, fighting off bees, surviving the heat, being careful of the critters and all the other 'Wild West' excitement.  And I did not have to rough it! Dad was going to retire (some day) and make and sell the polished cabochons (a stone cut and polished usually with a flat back and a convex top) for jewelry.  In the meantime, he had some distributors sell it, some metal smiths create pieces, and he trademarked it as 'Mojave Royal Blue' and 'Mojave Stone'.  He
Read more