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WHITEWATER DRAW — They had come almost as far as the greater sandhill cranes.
People from Minnesota, British Columbia, Canada, New York, Ohio, Maryland, Alabama signed the guestbook at Whitewater Draw near McNeal so far this month. They had come for one thing — to see the thousands of cranes and hundreds of other water and shores birds that call a rather small shallow lake their winter home.
The cranes’ travels start at the Arctic Circle and somehow, no one knows exactly, they manage to find this bit of open water in the midst of the high desert close to their main food source of corn, hay and alfalfa. Every harvest an amount of seed gets left in the fields and the gangly birds with the red caps eat every bit of it they can find. They range in winter from the draw up to Willcox fanning out as they go to various fields.
On Sunday, Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory member Sheri Williamson, had her binoculars ready and ears perked for the sights and sounds of the various winged beauties that make their home at Whitewater.
  
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“Oh that sounds like a wren,” she says as she focuses her binoculars. “There is just so much to see here and sometimes we don’t see them, we just hear them.”
For several years, Williamson has been a tour guide at the draw as a representative of SABO. Every Christmas, she participates in the annual bird count. Though she didn’t have this year’s official figures for the cranes, the Arizona Game and Fish Department noted that 22,367 Sandhills flew in last year.
It starts off slow, with just a few flocks, but over the period of a few weeks the sandhills number in the thousands.
“Most of the time you hear them before you see them,” said Williamson. “But, if you look closely at what appears to be smoke rising from beyond the mountains, you’ll see the waves miles away.”
The length of time it takes for them to get from there to the draw all depends on the wind direction and speed, she explained.
“Sometimes they really have to struggle to get back if the winds are strong,” she added.
She notices a crane all by itself out in the water and the look on her face says she is concerned. The poor thing appears to have an injured wing. It tries to fly but can’t. It makes no effort to return to the flock on the shore. She wonders if it was the recipient of a gunshot.
Sometimes the younger cranes will join flocks of geese. Perhaps an errant pellet hit it.
A gunshot rings out, and the cranes and snow geese head back to the sky now turning gray and threatening. Some of the geese land and one has been hit by something. It falls dead. She suspects a hunter.
Much of the federal funding for water fowl habitats like the draw comes from duck stamps and hunting licenses. Hunting is declining, and those funds are becoming limited, she added.
While waiting for the flocks of cranes to reach the draw, attention is placed on the various ducks and shorebirds scooting here and there. Tails of the northern pintails bob up and down as they search for things to eat in the swampy water. Mallards float lazily by. A small flock of cinnamon teal ducks appear to be dozing near one of the sandbars. Green-tailed teals glide by testing the waters for food. And the shovelers make a general mess as they bob for brine shrimp. The buffleheads join up with the teals.
A Say’s phoebe chirps from the top of some brush along the banks as a pair of black phoebes fight for territory.
Yellow-legs and dowatchers (both shore birds) scurry about as killdeer fly in.
High above, a red-tailed hawk scans the ground for lunch, wings spread wide gliding on the currents of the chilly wind.
A northern harrier flies low over the edge of the draw watching for something to pop out. It finds its prey via sound, Williamson said.
“Their hearing is so good they don’t need to see their prey. They hunt with sound. The red-tailed hawk flies high because it needs to see its prey,” she commented.
You hear the sandhills long before you see them. The gurgling sound becomes louder and louder as they approach in flocks. Then it seems like the sky just fills with them, and the ballet begins.
“It’s hard to describe this,” said Williamson. “This is an audio thrill as well as visual.”
In the skies above it’s as if someone is conducting them, somehow telling them what to do, where to fly, when to descend. How do they manage without crashing into each other? The flocks merge over the draw by the thousands and slowly, deliberately scan the ground and the air for predators. They stay at a high altitude until one flock starts “whiffling,” as Williamson called it.
“It’s the way they descend. They left the air out from under their wings, which drops their altitude,” she explains.
The flocks seem to stake out certain areas and gracefully glide in, landing gear down and effortlessly drop into the enormous gathering of gray brown feathers. The 200 or so snow geese that landed a bit earlier are now safely hidden within the ranks of the sandhills.
“There’s safety in numbers, and the cranes are so big they hide them,” she said.
Though she had hoped to catch another glimpse of the 3-year-old bald eagle, it did not appear.
“It’s not too much of a threat to the cranes. They just ignore him, but when he gets older that may change,” she warns.
A few new bird species were sighted this winter. The team that covered the draw for the Elfrida Christmas Bird Count added a Dunlin (a shore bird) and a red-breasted Merganser, both of which are rarely seen in southeastern Arizona, she added. The day before the count, on a special field trip for volunteers from Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix, a rough-legged hawk was spotted.
She suggests visitors plan to spend a number of hours there when they come and to bring lunch and drinks.
“You don’t want your hunger to drive you away during the best part of the day,” she laughs. “We really want people to see these birds. If we get them hooked on the cranes, maybe they’ll move on to the hard stuff.”
TO VISIT WHITEWATER DRAW
• Best viewing times are at the crack of dawn before lift-off to the feeding grounds or around 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. when they return to the draw to rest or from around 4 p.m. to dark as they make their way back to the draw for the night.
• Dress warmly; it gets cold on the water.
• Pack a lunch and drinks. To help the ranger, take your trash with you.
• Be sure to sign the guestbook at the entrance to the draw so the ranger can keep track of the number of visitors.
• The cranes are at Whitewater Draw from around mid-November to mid-February or even early March.
For information on Whitewater Draw, visit Arizona Game and Fish Department's Web site at azgfd.gov and type "whitewater draw" into the search field at the upper right-hand corner of the home page.
For information on SABO, visit sabo.org or call (520) 432-1388.
Directions
From Bisbee follow Highway 80 east to Double Adobe Road and turn left. Follow Double Adobe to Frontier Road and take a left. Follow to Davis Road and take a right. Go about three miles to Coffman Road and turn right. The draw is a few miles down on the right and is clearly marked. You can see the polebarn from the road at quite a distance.
From Tombstone: follow Highway 80 south to Davis Road and turn left. Go around 23 miles to Coffman Road and take a right. The draw is a few miles down on the right and is clearly marked.
Herald/Review reporter Shar Porier can be reached at 515-4692 or by e-mail at shar.porier@bisbeereview.net.
Old Marine wrote on Jan 5, 2009 7:06 AM: