"A Year at Tavasci Marsh," by Julie Hammonds
December
On December nights it is cold by the river, crisp air biting the lungs of any living thing brave enough to leave the comforts of shelter. Days can be pleasant, but at night where the Verde flows, the temperature drops below freezing. The moral of this story is to go higher for sleeping; onto the hillsides, into the trees.
Arriving at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in the afternoon, we drive out Flycatcher Road to walk the Tavasci Marsh Trail for a few hours. The stately Fremont cottonwoods along the Verde River are bare of leaves and the cattails glow golden; yellow berries cluster in branches along the trail. There is life here but you have to be awake to see the signs: scat filled with red berries or gray fur; obscure rustlings in the underbrush.
The one-mile trail guides us to a viewing platform overlooking the gray-gold wilds of Tavasci Marsh. Where the common cattails part, the water is partially frozen even this late in the afternoon. We see only American coots paddling the open waters. On the crust of ice walks an intrepid marsh bird; two smaller, paler birds dart in and out of the cattails. I can’t identify them. It’s a sign of how little I know this place and how much I have to learn.
Later, we hike the Mesa Trail to watch sunset gentle the Verde Valley. Two great blue herons fly side by side, leaving the river to pass the night in a higher, warmer place. Their dark shadows against the darkening sky tell me it is time for us, too, to head uphill to camp. Coyotes sing us to sleep.
Before sunrise the next morning we return to the Tavasci Marsh Trail, which begins on a cliff above the Verde River. If you approach quietly, you can peek over the cliff’s edge to spot birds along the river before they see you. This morning we spy a blue heron, two pied-billed grebes and a few coots.
Farther along the trail, a jaunty little pale-green bird with a flashy red cap like a beret on its head flits in the branches of a fourwing saltbush: a green-tailed towhee. As the sun rises, wave after wave of red-winged blackbirds fly upriver toward the marsh from their night roost in the cottonwoods.
At the marsh-viewing platform we are disappointed to see the water frozen over except for a small lead where two of the inevitable coots are swimming. As we hike back feeling unlucky, my companion suddenly drops to his knees in the trail. He has spotted three coyotes.
We wait for them to trot past, but they are too wily for that. I glimpse a larger coyote with a tan pelt standing in the trail looking toward us as two smaller coyotes gambol in the trailside brush. They move uphill into the shrubs, and by the time we walk past, straining our senses for any sight or sound of them, the air is silent.
This deep in winter there was no need to get up so early to see birds, apparently. But wildlife watching is a game of chance whose outcome can’t be known unless you roll the dice. What better way to experience Tavasci Marsh than by meeting coyotes at dawn?
April
Birdsongs ring out like bells from a dozen directions as we set out on this morning’s tour of Tavasci Marsh. My fellow hikers come from Colorado, South Dakota, Texas and Oregon, attracted here by the allure of Arizona in April and by the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival, or “Verde Birdy.” Headquartered at Dead Horse Ranch State Park, this four-day celebration includes walks, hikes and van-supported nature tours, lectures and workshops.
As we walk the Tavasci Marsh Trail, our guide explains the importance of this stately river to life in the Verde Valley. We feel the truth of it in our bones as we stand beneath Fremont cottonwoods on its banks, hunting with binoculars for the small, feathered singers that fill our morning with song. But the Verde is not the water source that keeps Tavasci a marsh; from our guide, we learn that Tavasci receives a year-round supply of warm spring water.
At first, the group’s coffee-fueled early-morning chatter disrupts my ability to hear the sounds of nature. But then, as person after person sights a special bird in the mesquite and cottonwood trees and calls the others to share it, I began to experience the group’s excitement in a different way.
“Bird,” one person says, binoculars held tightly to her eyes. “It’s about a third of the way up the mesquite in the middle distance, about a foot out from the trunk on a thick branch, standing in profile.”
“I see it, I see it,” comes the chorus of whispers. Or, more commonly, “I don’t see it. Where? I need another marker. What kind of bird? Is that it?”
A substantial amount of angst accompanies birding. It’s similar to the emotion golfers feel about the game. Sure, that last swing was fine, but will the next drive place the ball in the fairway’s center, or in the rough? Not seeing what everyone else sees — or says they see — can evoke deep-rooted fears in birders. What if I’m losing my sight? What if I don’t see this new bird … and I never add another to my life list?
Rick Wright, a professional birding guide from Tucson, explains that it is precisely to quiet such fears that birders talk so much. “Language builds reality and is our only way of knowing we are sharing an experience,” he says. “Birders talk so much when out birding because they want to know they are sharing reality with the people around them.”
Some experiences can be shared without language, though. When a Cooper’s hawk and red-tailed hawk join in aerial battle over the grassland bordering the marsh — the Cooper’s hawk taking the advantage again and again, rising quickly then diving on its bigger rival — the group goes silent for the first time all morning.
October
I am standing below a dead cottonwood tree perhaps a hundred yards short of the Tavasci Marsh viewing platform in Dead Horse Ranch State Park. In several trips past this snag, I’ve never seen a raptor on its gray branches, though the tree seems a perfect perch. This morning, two mature red-tailed hawks occupy high limbs. Maybe Doug Von Gausig has brought me luck.
Von Gausig, a biologist by training, lives on a nearby promontory. He has been watching this marsh for many years. Now as we stand below the dead cottonwood he cocks his head, listening to the birdsongs that grace the cool air. Von Gausig can name every singer by its song, a skill bred of long familiarity with the marsh. In this one spot he points out five kinds of wren, along with a dozen other songbirds.
We have seen and heard many different birds already this morning, but the numbers are higher right here than they have been anywhere else on our hike. “Look at all the edges,” explains Von Gausig. “Old and young cottonwood trees, grassland, shrubs and the marsh all weave together, right here.” By offering more different kinds of food and shelter, edges such as these create particularly rich wildlife-viewing opportunities.
“The whole marsh was like this,” Von Gausig reminisces. He was here when the Arizona Game and Fish Department began actively managing the marsh, in the 1990s. Before then, the area of the marsh was a dairy farm. During the transition from farm back to wetland, Tavasci attracted hosts of wildlife. “In the first few months the diversity went way, way up,” he says. “Wildlife species were coming to try the place out and figure out whether there were good opportunities here.” As the marsh habitat stabilized, he says, “Diversity dipped a bit, but it remained very rich habitat.”
As we walk toward the marsh viewing platform, I ask Von Gausig why he said “remained” rather than “remains.” From the platform, we watch American wigeons, American coots, common moorhens and pied-billed grebes paddling in the open water below. Hidden in the cattails, a sora utters a repeated complaint. From nearby trees, a northern flicker’s call interrupts the song of a marsh wren. It sounds like rich habitat to me, but Von Gausig makes and sells professional recordings of natural sounds. Maybe he’s hearing something different.
According to Von Gausig, in the 1990s the marsh had less water over all, more small stretches of open water, fewer cattails and more plant species. Now, our gazes sweep across common cattails… and not much else. What we see looks more like an Iowa cornfield than a richly diverse marsh habitat. Due to a combination of factors (including the industrious activities of the area’s beavers), the waters have risen, drowning trees at the marsh’s edge. Not many plants do well in this much water, but cattails are faring just fine.
As plant diversity has dropped, so have the number of bird and animal species using the marsh. “I would estimate right now it has about one-third the habitat value it used to have,” Von Gausig says.
On my first visit, last December, I experienced the marsh as a simple delight, a great place for watching birds (and the occasional coyote). Now after repeated visits, and with help from those whose history with this place is much longer than mine, I can name more bird and plant species. I have a better sense of how people have touched the marsh over time, using and shaping it … and are doing so still.
As my understanding of Tavasci Marsh has deepened, my connection to it has grown stronger. Rather than breed contempt, familiarity with this place has bred respect: for its natural beauty, for the wildlife-watching opportunities it provides, and most of all for its resilience. I look forward to future visits to watch wildlife at Tavasci Marsh; not just through the year, but through the years.
This article was published in the January-February 2007
issue of Arizona Wildlife Views magazine. To subscribe or give a gift, order online or call (800) 777-0015.
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