November 12 -- A Hawk At The Mormon Church, And A Bird Rarity Visits the Overton WMA

The Moapa Valley here in SE Nevada is a great place to ride your bike. Flat with wide shoulders -- at least on the main road through the valley -- sprinkled with bike paths, you can cycle for miles with very little effort -- just as long as the wind doesn't pick up.  So I went out for a ride with my mountain bike (circa 1994) Wednesday morning, heading up Moapa Valley Blvd north to Logandale. I had a brief moment of "what if?" when some impatient driver passed a truck that was in the left lane -- and missed me by a few feet, though I was way over on the shoulder. When you see a car coming at you, going 45mph, it makes you think you were THAT close to ruining your whole -- life...Idiot. But all was forgotten when I looked up at a lamp post -- force of habit, always looking for birds, particularly perched raptors -- in front of Logandale's Mormon church and saw a whitish bird, too far away to make to out, but as I come closer...Sheesh, it's a Ferruginous Hawk! OK, pull off the road, don't make eye contact with it otherwise it will fly away, slowly take the camera out of the back rack bag, turn it on, then turn around and -- it flew off. Crap! So I walk the bike across the street underneath the lamp post, lean my bike against it -- and everything falls out of the rack bag onto the street -- BirdJam iPod Nano, iPad Mini, wireless device -- the whole works. As I'm picking everything up before it gets trampled by an oncoming car, I look up and see the "Ferrug" has flown to another lamp post in the church's parking lot. OK, now this time TAKE your time, lean the bike on the tree so it and you and hidden from the Ferrug, take your camera back out, slowly walk towards the hawk but not directly TO him, then..

Wonderful. What a beauty!  I thank him for his time and patience -- but of course by this time he's flown to another light pole where I can't follow him. But I got the capture, though not with the 500 f/4 as I can't carry it on my bike. But I now know he's there, observing the field across from the church, so I'll be back with the truck and the "Big Boy" lens... I turn back and head to the Overton Wildlife Management Area, going down the dirt access road that leads south to Pintail Pond. While there a hunter comes along with his gun, camouflage outfit, and duck decoy -- it's an even calendar day, so it's "hunt day" -- and I ask him if he had any "luck". Nope he said, and his problem was he blasts away when he sees a bird instead of waiting until it gets closer. I tell him about the damage to the interior roads of the WMA and he agrees, saying he might try to take his boat to Echo Bay and go up the Overton Arm to reach the south end of the WMA. A very nice guy and good talk...I bike back to Discovery and the RV park, go to Lin's market up the street for groceries, do a load of laundry, then relax and look through the recent eBird reports from the Overton WMA. What's THIS? Someone has reported, and posted pics of, a Thick-billed Kingbird there on November 9th!  It's not a new bird for me -- I was around for the TBK at the South Coast Botanic Garden in winter 2008-2009 -- the only TBK noted in the nationwide 2008 Christmas Bird Count -- but how often do you get to see one? Thick-billeds are "Mexican" birds only seen, if at all in a few canyons along the Arizona border with Mexico, though on occasion they are found in areas far away from there -- such as southern California. And this time I have the 500 f/4 lens with me, which I didn't have in 2008. So about an hour before sunset I head over to the WMA parking lot and look at the trees near the entrance; the eBird report said it was seen at the area. No, nothing... THERE! Right out in the open, up on the top branches of a tree -- 

Indubitably a Thick-billed Kingbird -- look at that "schnozz" ! (OK, it's not a nose, but you know what I mean.)  And larger than other Kingbirds. I got a few good, quick shots of it, then it flew off to the west. Just after, a couple pulled up in the parking lot with their compact car, and as they didn't look like hunters I asked, "Looking for the Thick-billed Kingbird?" And they were. I told them where I saw it, that it has been in the same location for the past few days, and it just flew to the west. As I had NO idea of its existence until a few hours before, and I found it so easily, I consider it "good karma" -- for I'm heading down to SE Arizona's Portal tomorrow the 13th to look at a particular manufactured house for possible purchase...