Date: 9/10/26 9:47 am From: trochetj (via aznmbirds Mailing List) <aznmbirds...> Subject: [AZNMbirds] CWNM: Zuni Mountains area birds
Dear Birders,
This morning early there was an eastern phoebe in the parking lot of Paseo del Coyote golf course in Grants, Cibola County. It was in the perimeter of the largest cottonwood in the lot and on the adjacent electric wire that runs through the tree. Unfortunately, when the waste management truck collected the refuse from the receptacle beneath the tree at 7AM the bird flew off to the south. It did not seem to have returned when I check the trees in the lot 45 minutes ago.
At the 4th Street park in Grants just now was a female-plumaged phainopepla, plus two woodpeckers clearly transient at the site, a Lewis’s woodpecker and an acorn woodpecker. These were all at the north end of the park, over the watercourse. Common western migrant perching birds were in fair numbers this morning, in contrast to the paucity encountered the three previous days.
On Monday evening about 400 meters east of Ojo Redondo campground in the high Zunis, I found a female American three-toed woodpecker. And at midday on Monday at Ramah Lake (McKinley County) there was an interesting cormorant. Lots of features suggested neotropic cormorant (small size, smaller & finer bill, disproportionately longer tail, a strong olive cast to the back, all compared to seven adjacent double-crested cormorants; the shape of the rear of the gular pouch was ambiguous at 500 meters distance) but the bird had a small area of yellow above the lores. A runt double-crested? A hybrid? I don’t know what to make of it.
Best,
John Trochet
Sacramento, California
presently visiting the Zuni Mountains
