Familiar Birds in Unfamiliar Places

Seeing "Tucson" birds on San Juan Island

Seeing familiar birds in a completely different environment was not unexpected but still was surprising. On San Juan Island, the White-crowned Sparrows sang or called continuously. During their winter stay in southern Arizona, I never hear them singing. But in Washington at the first of June during breeding season, the White-crowns were all very vocal.

Usually in Tucson’s during the winter, I have seen White-crowned Sparrows on the ground or near the ground where they are looking for seeds. It was interesting to see them much higher up in trees on San Juan.

There are some subtle regional differences in the crowns and bills of White-crowned Sparrows. Additionally, the songs of White-crowns vary depending on the region they live in. Birdnote explains why.

American Robins are winter visitors to Tucson and the surrounding deserts. During the summer months, some can be found at higher mountain elevations in southern Arizona. In San Juan, the Robins were commonplace.

This Robin was perched on a branch right outside of our hotel room's balcony. The fact that it had a number of insects in its bill tells me it was out "shopping" for groceries for its young on the nest.

During the winters in Tucson, I see Robins often gorging on the fruit of date palms and other wintering berries as my post from January, 2023 shows. During the summers elsewhere, Robins will also eat fruit but they mostly turn to insects for the protein.

We have Spotted Towhees in southern Arizona year-round. During the summers they tend to be in mid- to upper mountain level. During the winter some will move down to the desert elevation.

It was summer though, and so the Spotted Towhees in Washington were singing. To learn more about Spotted Towhees and the other Towhees of southern Arizona, see Henry Johnson's Mount Lemmon Images blog

The most fun 'familiar' bird I found in a totally unfamiliar place was this Great Horned Owl. We took a walk down a dock to see all the boats- that's not something we do often in Tucson!! Halfway down the dock we saw a Great Horned Owl perched on a boat in front of the windshield. It was calm as people walked back and forth across the dock. I didn't have my camera with me so my cell phone camera had to suffice, but I got the biggest kick out of seeing this bird.

So much on San Juan Island was different from our Tucson area and home, but there were a few things that did look familiar.