I recently got from Amazon a neat little book on animal tracks of New Mexico and Arizona.  Since we had a couple of inches of fresh snow this morning, I took it out with me on my bird walk.  Sure enough, I was able to (at least tentatively) identify the delicate stitching of marks along the upper end of our road as the track of a kangaroo rat.

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Normally my bird-spotting skills are good enough to peg birds by species, and sometimes by sex or age if the species varies that way.  But it's not often that I can distinguish an individual bird from all the others ( Read more... )

Two of the species I've come to know and love since I moved to New Mexico (and which aren't found in Maryland) are the Townsend's solitaire and the bushtit ( Read more... )

It's been about two and a half months since I relocated from Maryland to New Mexico, and I'm beginning to get a handle on the local birds.

In some ways I'm rather a minimalist birder.  I don't like to carry a lot of equipment; I generally dress for the weather (which always includes a hat), hang my binoculars around my neck, and figure I'm all set ( Read more... )