BY KAY CHARTER
When my husband and I were visiting our San Diego friends Mike and Ellene Gibbs, we discussed the possibility of meeting in Tucson next year for a bit of birding. I said we would take them to the sewage treatment ponds. Ellene responded dryly that the suggestion sounded exciting. Her comment came to mind a couple of weeks later when my husband and I met Michigan birding friends Jack and Nancy Waldron at Tucson's sewage treatment facility.
Despite Ellene's mild sarcasm, sewage treatment ponds are excellent places to look for birds. Many localities take advantage of that fact by building boardwalks and observation decks to invite birders in and, in the process, adding ecotourist dollars to their communities. Thus we have the Port Aransas "Birding Center" in coastal Texas, Las Galinas "Wildlife Ponds" in California's Marin County and Tucson's "Sweetwater Wetlands."
We visit Sweetwater at least once every winter and during each visit, we've found many familiar friends such as Say's and black phoebes, Harris' hawks and hoards of yellow-rumped warblers. Often there are more exciting finds. Occasionally a vermilion flycatcher will appear, a bird that is common in the Tucson area in summer but hard to find north of the border in winter. Flocks of yellow-headed blackbirds can be present, and male Anna's hummingbirds are always on display by the first of the year.
But the real reason to visit any area where water exists is for the waterfowl and shorebirds. Sweetwater is no exception. Virtually all the usual suspects are present and in sight: ruddy ducks, American wigeon, pintails, ring-necked ducks, shovelers, gadwalls and all three species of teal are always around. For several years, a lone least grebe, a rare Mexican species, hung out in the ponds.
For our visit last month, we met the Waldrons in the parking lot of Sweetwater Wetlands to the call of a sora in the cattails. Soras, members of the rail family, look a little like tiny chickens with turned-up tails and white rump feathers. They are far more often heard than seen. In eight years of birding this particular spot, we have heard at least half a dozen on every single visit. But we have never seen one.
We walked around the eastern edge of the cattail filled, willow-lined ponds, spotting a couple of common moorhens and watching a snowy egret thrust its bill into the pond for a fish.
A kingfisher dove from a snag over the water and, as we moved along to the south side of the wetlands, canyon towhees popped in and out of the vegetation, scratching sandy soil in search of food. Halfway around the trail, a couple coming from the opposite direction stopped us.
"Did you know there's a common goldeneye in the last pond?"
We didn't.
Common goldeneyes are chunky, medium-size diving ducks with black heads that appear iridescent green in the right light. The sun was behind us when we reached the pond, and our bird was mere feet from the observation platform. His head positively glowed under the bright desert light and his cheek patch, sides, breast and belly shone brilliant white. As his name suggests, his eye was golden yellow.
Goldeneyes are often called "whistlers," a name taken from the whistle of their wings as they fly. This whistle is often heard before the birds are seen. They fly with fast wing beats in tight formations; no other duck flies as consistently in tight formation.
These birds are cavity nesters, breeding up to the tree line across Canada and Alaska. They also nest in northern Eurasia. In winter, they are found in open waters from southern Canada down through the U.S. and southward into northern Mexico. On the Pacific Coast, winter finds them from Alaska to Mexico. (They are commonly found in Michigan, including in Grand Traverse Bay.)
Outside the breeding season, goldeneyes typically hang around in larger bodies of water, thus the bird at the Sweetwater pond was unexpected. It was a pleasant surprise, and a good example of why birders almost always check out sewage treatment ponds when they are in new territories.
Kay Charter is executive director of Saving Birds Thru Habitat, an organization that teaches people how to help migrating birds whose populations are declining
