Mary Ann and I went to the Granite Reef Recreation Area on the Salt River on Feb 2, 2022. We got there at about 8:00. It was a cold morning (about 45 degrees), but quickly warmed up to the mid 60s.
We go to Granite Reef quite a lot, but when we got there, we hardly recognized it! In the picnic area, all of the reeds along the river had been cleaned out, so there was an open view of the river, and of Red Mountain. The reeds are an invasive species, and an annoyance, but they are difficult to eliminate. They keep growing back, so it takes constant maintenance to keep them cleared out.
We didn’t see any unusual birds – just the ones we normally see. There were a lot of water fowl in the river, but they were too far away for good pictures. I included some anyway. The Common Goldeneye duck was reported, and I’ve seen it there before, but I didn’t see it on this trip. Some other birders said they saw it.
A Black-and-white Warbler and a Winter Wren were reported, and Tommy D. gave a GPS of the location. His GPS led us to a new part of the area that we hadn’t been to before. If you drive a little ways past the Granite Reef exit, just past the section of freeway with a guard rail, there’s a parking area on the north (left) side. There’s a trail along the fence that goes north to the river. It’s a nice spot, but we didn’t see either of the birds.
I ran into Jim Burns who was returning from the Winter Wren spot. Jim is an outdoorsman and photographer of some renown (though he would deny it). For years, he wrote a column in the Arizona Republic, and he has published several books. He had a photo published this year in the Arizona Wildlife Views calendar. It is an awesome photo of a Peregrine Falcon in flight (you can see it here). Jim was looking for the Winter Wren, but didn’t see it. I also met Roger Rohback, who posts a lot on ebird.org. He didn’t see the Winter Wren, but he got recordings of it.
We walked from Granite Reef to the Winter Wren location, which was about 1.75 miles, round trip. Next time, we’ll know to drive to the parking area (the round trip distance from the parking area to the river is about 0.9 miles). We didn’t have time to visit any of the other locations on the Salt River on this trip.
