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Walk Down an Arroyo
Take a walk in the desert. There's a lot out there to see. And hear!
© Andy Morffew
Arroyo means "stream" in Spanish. With mesquite, yucca, and cactus along their edges, arroyos in the Southwest fill with water only a few times a year, mostly during the heavy rains of late summer. There's a remarkable diversity of wildlife here, including this Pyrrhuloxia. Birds here are most active in the morning, except those that are nighttime specialists. The sounds of life in an arroyo are magical, day and night.
BirdNote®
Walk Down an Arroyo
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
[Greater Roadrunner song]
Have you ever heard a Roadrunner sing? That’s the maker of this cooing sound.
[Greater Roadrunner song]
Want to hear more sounds of the desert Southwest? [Someone walking along a sandy path] Come along, as we walk along an arroyo, a dry, sandy creek bed. Arroyo means “stream” in Spanish. With mesquite, yucca, and cactus along their edges, arroyos in the Southwest fill with water only a few times a year, mostly during the heavy rains of late summer.
Despite the arroyo’s lack of water at the moment, there’s a remarkable diversity of wildlife here. [Northern Beardless Tyrannulet song] That’s a Northern Beardless Tyrannulet singing, a tiny flycatcher with a very distinctive voice. [Northern Beardless Tyrannulet song] And there’s a Pyrrhuloxia singing from atop a yucca. [Pyrrhuloxia song] The Pyrrhuloxia looks a lot like a cardinal, except it’s feathered in silvery gray, with magenta highlights. [Pyrrhuloxia song]
Birds here are most active in the morning, except those that are nighttime specialists. [Call of Lesser Nighthawk] Just after sunset, we’d hear the drawn-out trill of a Lesser Nighthawk. [Lesser Nighthawk] And a cousin of the nighthawk, a Buff-collared Nightjar, might begin to call [Buff-collared Nightjar calls].
The sounds of life in an arroyo are magical, day and night.
Today’s show is brought to you by The Bobolink Foundation. For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.
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Sounds of the birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Greater Roadrunner song recorded by A.A. Allen; song of Northern Beardless Tyrannulet 40558 and song of Pyrrhuloxia 40568 by G.A. Keller; call of Lesser Nighthawk 118627 by G.A. Keller; Buff-collared Nightjar 40510 by G.A. Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org April 2018/2020/2022 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# arroyo-01-2012-04-19 arroyo-01
Bob Sundstrom
Writer
Mary McCann
NarratorSights & Sounds
