April 13, 2020

Dear friends:

This message comes courtesy of Rick Wright, who is a widely published author and sought-after lecturer and field trip leader. Below, Rick shares several experiences that have impacted his birding career.

Best wishes,

Victor Emanuel

VIGNETTES BY RICK WRIGHT

Northern Goshawk ©​ Rick Wright

For quite a while the Northern Goshawk was my “nemesis” bird in Europe: I just couldn’t find one. Early one morning in northwest Germany, though, I saw a distant huge accipiter coming my way, and as it got closer, I could see the heavy tail, the dark crown, the massive breast. But I heard something too, a weird faint jangling sound I couldn’t quite place. Not until the Gos was right overhead did I understand: it was wearing jesses and bells, a falconer’s bird out looking for partridges and hares—and gullible birders. Having spent a lot of time since then in Berlin and Brandenburg, I’ve seen lots of Northern Goshawks in Europe now, but I still count that falconer’s bird as my Goshawk #0.

I have hundreds, maybe thousands of favorite places in the world, but high on the list are the Warbler Pools in Arizona’s Madera Canyon. Just off the trail, below a low but steep waterfall, the pools are the perfect place for a puddle watch. One early morning our friend Darlene and I were perched quietly on our rocks above the water, watching the usual dazzling parade of thirsty warblers, flycatchers, and juncos. Suddenly something bigger swept in right above our heads: a male Elegant Trogon. It may not have been the first trogon we’d encountered that morning—we were after all in the heart of the species’ tiny US range—but it was surely the first trogon either of us had seen flop out of the trees and into the shallow water, where it splashed and bathed for long minutes, the bird’s incredible blues, greens, violets, and reds breaking in the water droplets it threw into the air. When the bird left, we breathed, and said nothing for long minutes ourselves.

A Northern Potoo on a lowland roadside in Guatemala ©​ Rick Wright

Returning to Tikal late one evening, suddenly two great saucers of yellow light flashed across the road in front of the van. We screeched to a stop and looked out the windows to find a Northern Potoo perched on a stump just feet away from our vehicle.  A few seconds later the police pulled up beside us, kindly asking if we needed help—and blocking our view of the bird. When we explained, they generously offered to put a light on the potoo for us. Unfortunately, the only illumination they could cast on the scene was the blue-and-reds on the roof of their SUV, so we saw the bird in the strobe flashes of the police lights. At least the siren didn’t come on; though if it had, I wouldn’t have been able to hear someone humming an ABBA tune from the seat behind me.

It’s a notorious truth that the “best” birds sometimes come just as you’re getting back into the vehicle to leave a place. Never have I had that happen in a more surprising way than on a fine sunny morning in the Llobregat marshes of Barcelona. We’d enjoyed a wonderful walk, but it was time to move on. As I unlocked the van, half a dozen starlings flushed from the artichoke patch across the street—one of them pink. I could barely choke out the words “Rosy Starling,” but happily the bird took a high perch just above us, where this startling stray from eastern Europe gave us lingering looks, and immediately jumped to the top of the list of most surprising birds ever on one of my tours.

I’ve never been happier not to see a Hooded Merganser. When the participants in a February birding workshop pulled into the lot at Patagonia Lake, in southeast Arizona, we were met by two really early risers who excitedly told us about the flock of hoodeds they’d seen at the marina. Nice bird, so let’s start there. The “mergansers” were Ruddy Ducks—a surprisingly frequent source of confusion—and there wasn’t much else around. Not, that is, until a big brown swallow flew in from who knows where and started hunting. All I knew was I’d never seen anything like it. We frantically started making notes and sketches, and when the bird landed in an ash, I called out for anyone with a cell phone to photograph it through my scope. Almost everyone had a cell phone—and no one knew how to work the camera on it. I started running up and down the road, seeking whom I might enlist, and finally met a kind young man who took a dozen reasonable phonescoped photos of the western US’s first Brown-chested Martin. I went home that afternoon and bought a camera and a cell phone.

European Roller ©​ Rick Wright

Southern France is easy to get around in: not much traffic and plenty of landmarks. So where had Alison gone? Her van had been right behind mine as we drove out to the Méjanes dikes on the first day of the tour. Half an hour later I started to worry. Finally there came a text message: “Sorry. Stopped for a European Roller on a wire.” Of course we would see more rollers as the days went on, but that remains my favorite text message ever.