Jovial Racketing of an Acorn Woodpecker

Even rare brownbacked, spot-breasted Arizona woodpeckers might be met with in small, sociable companies in these southern ranges. But now the jovial racketing of an acorn woodpecker aroused me. Perhaps he, too, was anticipating that promised season of plenty in the live oak groves, when bountiful mast would set him a-gathering his winter hoard. As I wandered reluctantly down through the alluring woodland, a panoramic view of the desert opened before me. Beyond the oak-dotted flanks of the Empire Range, beyond the green foothill slopes of the Santa Ritas, rising from flat, arid plains like steep-walled isles from a gray sea, rose far, inviting ranges-the Mustangs, Whetstones and Huachucas-other oak-clad, sun-bathed "islands" of the desert. Where the thirsty Hassayampa winds southward between shimmering cholla flats and parched, ocotillo-studded benches towards the Gila, it keeps close beside itself on either bank bordering bowers of refreshing green.

Even where the river's bed becomes a broad, sandy wash, abandoned by surface waters, or where only a transient rill defies the heated pebbles to meander back and forth across 200 yards of glaring gravel, tall cottonwoods, feathery-leaved mesquite, sandbar willows and dense arrowweed line the curving stream-course. However few one's steps beneath the verdant broadleafs, in spring such an experience becomes an adventure in kaleidoscopic color and sound. Within these narrow gardens, Arizona cardinals flash in brilliant rivalry with vermilion flycatchers and rose-red Cooper's summer tanagers. Golden-winged gilded flickers riot in the high, leafy canopy or stride raucously up great furrowed trunks. With hammering of Gila woodpeckers, their excited drumming throbs in the groves; and the high clamor of both flings a racketing pattern of strangely thrilling cries against the low, harsh, yet oddly pleasant cooing of the white-winged doves.

Glossy, black phainopeplas dart out above the dazzling wash, seize insect prey with flycatcher precision, and return with a flash of white wing bars. Bullock orioles come to add clear piping, discordant chatter and rollicking song to a carnival made scintillated with their flaming red-orange and jet-black. In late April I crept into the arrowweed in pursuit of a spirited, intermittent song. A large bird, with amazingly decurved, sicklebill and bright, chestnut-colored undertail coverts, clung high on a swaying stem. Once this feathered opportunist apparently deserted hot plains and desert kin for the lush tangles of Cottonwood borders-my sweet musician was a shy crissal thrasher, first cousin to many lyric-throated dwellers of the cactus flats.