![]() ![]() Bird on your own when the trails are open, sunrise to 7 p.m. Today, more than 250 birds have been spotted here. Once a dump site less than two miles south of downtown Phoenix, this 600-acre restoration area stretches along five miles of the Salt River and is home to the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center. If you’re not sure what to do, he advises taking an organized bird walk, like the one held on Mondays at the Desert Botanical Garden.īirding is something you learn by doing, and in Phoenix, there are plenty of great bird sites to get the hang of it. A field guide helps, too, and most places known for birding will have a bird list available online or onsite. You notice the insects swarming near the water’s surface, the shape of the leaves on an unfamiliar tree, and-out of the corner of your eye-something grey slash in front of a tree and disappear behind a bush.Īs we continue through the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area, I ask him what it takes to get started birding. You’re not zipping past on a mountain bike or dutifully hiking a trail. Pausing to really experience a place gives you a deeper appreciation for it, I realize as we walk along the Salt River. When you stop and be fairly quiet, birds will start to appear. ![]() It’s also about stopping, being still and noticing your surroundings, which is why it’s such a great way to explore Phoenix. Birding, I learn from him, is just as much about what you hear as what you see. I don’t see the birds, but I continue to hear them, drawn by the call of “pish, pish, pish” Larson sounded before I arrive. “There weren’t any birds when I got here, but I started pishing, and they filled that tree,” he says, pointing to a mesquite. As soon as I do, the chirping comes at me from all directions. “Listen,” says Mark Larson, president of the Maricopa Audubon Society.Īfter parking, grabbing my notebook and rushing to meet Larson in front of the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center less than two miles south of downtown Phoenix, I have to make a conscious effort to hear the sounds around me. Birding in Phoenix Reconnect with the sights and sounds of nature at these top spots for birding in Greater Phoenix. ![]()
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