By Dan Groebner

You may not think it’s birding season in the White Mountains with the weather we’ve been having lately. But some birding activities take time to plan and execute, so local folks interested in different aspects of birds will be gathering soon to discuss their projects, including any results, and try to recruit participants to help with field projects.  

One local group holding a coordination meeting from 1:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. on March 20 at the Game and Fish Regional Office in Pinetop is called the Arizona Bird Conservation Initiative (ABCI). Anybody interested in birds can be part of this ABCI birding group, including private citizens just wanting to learn some new birds all the way to professional ornithologists who help guide the group. There are no membership requirements and some people come to the meetings just to hear about the latest information on White Mountain birds and have their questions answered.

The White Mountain ABCI group brings together biologists from Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD), the U.S. Forest Service, State Lands, the local Audubon chapter, and the White Mountain Nature Center, as well as local citizens who just have an interest in birding. This unique assemblage mimics some of nature’s more diverse habitats, providing the same stability, productivity and creativity found in nature.

The purpose of the group is to share the most current information on birds in the White Mountains as well as actively plan and implement various bird conservation projects that need volunteer help to accomplish. Updates will be provided on local projects such as eagle and pinyon jay monitoring.

In addition, volunteers are needed to help with surveys that are looking for secretive birds that live in some of our lushest marshes. Since this habitat is so thick with vegetation during the summer breeding seasons, the best way to find some of these birds is to listen for their calls, especially very early in the morning.

To increase the chances of hearing these birds, their calls can be played over a speaker intermittently, sometimes eliciting a jealous response from a nearby territorial male bird of that same species. Using this callback method of survey should only be conducted in short durations by trained and certified volunteers, so as not to disrupt a breeding pair and jeopardize their annual production of eggs from abandonment.

These marshbird surveys often get responses from Virginia rails, sora, pied-billed grebes, and American coots. Sometimes a great blue heron will grunt and groan in response but they are usually silent outside of their rookeries. American bitterns may be breeding in Arizona but we still have yet to hear them respond on these surveys in the White Mountains. 

Of course, this is a great way to learn about some of the other songbirds that call marshes and wetlands their homes, but are not technically surveyed in the marshbird surveys. These would include both the red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds, yellow warblers, marsh wrens, common yellowthroats, or maybe even a blue grosbeak or lazuli bunting. If the surveys are adjacent to a pond or lake, there are usually countless species of waterfowl with the males displaying their vibrant nuptial plumage trying to impress the females.

Another project conducted annually with citizen scientist’s help is the colonial bird nesters survey, which counts the number of great blue heron, black-crowned night heron, and double-crested cormorant nests in some of the White Mountain “rookeries”. Bird rookeries are communal or colonial assemblages of a bunch of nests in a small area, comprising maybe a dozen trees closely arranged to each other. Sometimes there are 10 nests in the same tree, so you can imagine it is quite a “zoo” when the young hatch.

This interesting reproductive strategy of nesting in a large group is obviously the opposite of highly territorial birds like eagles and blackbirds, but works for the herons and cormorants. Usually, there is a plentiful food source of small fish and amphibians nearby to support this high-density housing. But you’ll still see plenty of squabbles and scrambles and raucous rattling when the adults bring in food to one nest and not the others. Somehow, most of the chicks get fed enough and start flying relatively quickly.

These colonial nesters don’t have any problem constructing their stick nests in almost any type of tree, but other bird species are a little more picky and not as industrious when it comes to their nesting home. Some birds require a cavity such as a hollowed out dead tree to nest in. These cavities provide more protection from the elements but can also be in short supply in the forest. Most birds, other than woodpeckers, can not excavate their own holes so they depend on other “subcontractors” or a rotted spot in the tree where a branch broke off.

Many dead trees are removed due to a safety or fire hazard, so sometimes this nesting habitat can be replaced with artificial structures. Bird nest boxes are one example, with each species preferring a specific sized box with the correctly sized hole as an entrance. Local species that appreciate our efforts in building homes for them are both the mountain and western bluebirds as well as American kestrels.

Kestrel boxes are larger in dimensions and have bigger entrance holes than bluebird boxes, but both types should be cleaned and maintained every year. That’s where more citizen biologists are needed. There are now about 70+ bluebird and kestrel boxes erected in the White Mountains that need to be monitored and maintained. Some of these boxes were “adopted” from a couple who were retiring from maintaining them and some houses were built and erected by another volunteer. 

The bird houses are distributed throughout the area on the National Forest, AGFD wildlife areas, and also on private lands. Volunteers are needed to periodically check on the boxes to see what kinds of birds are using them and then verify if any chicks were produced later in the spring or summer. At the end of the season the boxes need a quick cleaning and some minor repairs. All results will be included in Cornell University’s NestWatch program (NestWatch.org).

During the ABCI meeting, instructions to build and maintain your own bluebird or kestrel box will be made available, in case you just want to try one on your property.

Another project that is just getting started involves radio-tracking birds, bats and insects that happen to fly by the Pinetop Game and Fish office within range of a radio receiver set up there. The system is called the Motus Wildlife Tracking system (Motus.org) and utilizes tiny transmitters that are even small enough to place on a butterfly. Transmitters for birds can be solar powered and last for years so they are able to track these birds as they migrate long distances over multiple seasons.

There are now thousands of radio receiving stations like the Pinetop Motus Station that are all constantly listening for a transmitter to fly by. As soon as a detection is made, the information is relayed over the internet to a website that can display the information in almost real-time. This project is currently looking for cooperators who may want to host more receiving stations in the White Mountains area so that we can build a series of receivers to listen along the entire Mogollon Rim.

To learn about other birding activities in the White Mountains and make contact with some fellow birders plan on attending the Arizona Bird Conservation Initiative meeting at the Pinetop Arizona Game and Fish office at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, or call (928) 532-3208 for more information.