The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

October 2, 2022  

The three Persian princes of Serendip weren’t just lucky so much as they were in the right place with the right mind.  They didn’t stumble onto their discoveries.  They were paying attention.  They placed themselves into situations where coincidences happen.

Sometimes, the uncanny will arise to astonish you during the mundane repetitions of your day.  And all you did was lift your eyes to see it.

This morning, while making my rounds in the yard for warblers and vireos (attempting to boost my numbers for October with the September holdovers—altogether 51 species!), a flash of wings along the oak-hung canyon grabbed my attention.  Cooper’s hawk?  Redtail?  When the raptor landed in the top of a tree, I swung up my camera and shot a few photos, then continued shooting as it flew off. 

Later, back on the porch, I showed the images to the wife.  “Not a redtail,” I said.  “No dark leading edge on the wings.  And look at that dark helmeted head and band at the end of the tail.”

She flipped through the pages of Rick Taylor’s new Birds of Arizona.  “Light morph short-tailed hawk?” she said, showing me the photograph.  “Says it was first recorded in the Chiricahuas in 1985.”

August 7, 1985.  Barfoot Junction.  I remembered talking with the guy when I was writing my book about Chiricahua Mountains.

John Arvin, birdwatcher and naturalist, was leading a tour.  Like those he led in Sinaloa and Nayarit where he often saw the hawks.  “But I had no idea that there were any short-tailed hawks any closer to Arizona than extreme southern Sonora,” he told me. 

Around midday, he and his group were returning to the van after an excursion on foot.  “I saw the bird coming through breaks in the trees and I realized it was either a short-tailed hawk or a white-tailed hawk because of its extensive white underparts and dark, helmet-like head.”  Arvin alerted his group and concentrated on an opening in the trees where the hawk would appear; when it did, he followed the bird, noting every feature before it disappeared behind a ridge. 

“I immediately sat down with a notebook and recorded all my impressions while they were fresh in my mind.  Some of the group hadn't seen this technique of documenting rare sightings immediately in the field instead of running to the books for look-alike comparisons with pictures.”

He’d seen a hawk that no one before had seen in Arizona.  

This afternoon, I get an email from eBird reviewer Mark Stevenson about my short-tailed hawk sighting.  “Pretty Cool!” he writes.  “Your observation has been accepted and is now an important part of the overall picture for this species.”

Serendipity is an act of will.  Yard bird #171.  The only short-tailed hawk ever seen in the Mule Mountains.

Short-tailed hawks, crow-sized, tropical broad-winged raptors, range from Mexico to South America, inhabiting mountains and mixed woodlands.  They are rare north of the border. Less than 500 cross into the US, some in Texas and more in Florida.  In Arizona, they breed in the Chiricahua Mountains and may be expanding their range northward.

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