Gila Descending by M.H. Salmon

Having visited southwestern New Mexico in May and hiked several day trips around the Gila Wilderness, I looked forward with anticipation to reading Gila Descending, an account of Silver City, NM resident M.H. Salmon's trip by foot and canoe down most of the length of the Gila River in New Mexico and Arizona. In the end, I was a bit disappointed. I didn't much like the author as he portrayed himself. He's a self-described "houndsman" and coyote hunter, and he never lets you forget it. I have no problem with hunting for meat or to maintain an ecological balance, but M.H. Salmon clearly loves to pursue and kill coyotes (whose pelts he does sell, at least). Nevertheless, his love of hunting was a turn-off for me.

I also disliked his writing style. He informs his readers that he writes for outdoors magazines, so clearly he is able to sell his writing, but I found his style to be affectedly "down-homey"; it didn't ring true to me.

It was also irresponsible of him to bring a cat along with him on this trip. The cat could easily have wandered off, and in one instance, the cat nearly drowned when the canoe capsized with the cat leashed to the struts. But, like nearly everything else in the author's life (according to irritating little hints dropped throughout), he had a truly ambivalent relationship with the cat.

Salmon is not good at describing the landscape and the countryside. I did not come away from the book with a clear, well-developed picture of the rugged landscape of the upper Gila.

Though Salmon reports that the Gila disappears well short of its historic mouth at the Colorado River, he ends his trip before he reaches the de facto "end" of the river. I kept waiting for him to discuss the river's demise in the irrigated deserts of Arizona, but he didn't.

The book, divided into three sections, would benefit from more maps. There is one map of the entire Gila drainage at the beginning of the book, but a more detailed map of each of the individual sections would have been a welcome addition.

While I have gone into great detail about why I was disappointed by the book, it was by no means a waste of time. His trip was interesting and depicted with enough sense of adventure that I'd like to try it myself some time. Furthermore, the author's heart is certainly in the right place when it comes to enjoying and defending the Gila in particular and wilderness in general. So, all in all, the book's a good--but not a great--read.

Straddling the Continental Divide: Western New Mexico (May 2009) VII

Gila River at TNC's Gila River Preserve (View upstream toward Gila Wilderness)

A Banner Day for Birds

Wednesday morning, May 20, after breakfast we headed northwest from Silver City to explore The Nature Conservancy's Gila River Farm Preserve just outside the hamlet of Gila, NM, on a guided tour with Mike, TNC's premier birder in New Mexico. This section of the Gila is just outside the border of the Gila Wilderness, and by this point the river has emerged from the mountains and has begun to flow through low hills in a broad valley.

Gila Wilderness as viewed upstream from the Gila River at TNC's Gila River Farm Preserve

Once our caravan arrived at the preserve, Mike gave us an overview and orientation, and then walked us over to an irrigation canal to give us an introduction to water rights in New Mexico. He explained that water rights must be used or that they will be rescinded and reallocated. He also explained that The Nature Conservancy is in the forefront of making the case that maintenance and restoration of natural ecosystems is a legitimate use of water rights (cf., consumptive agricultural use), but that such use was not yet approved. Therefore, TNC partially uses the water rights that came along with the farm that it bought to create the preserve to encourage the development of wetland habitat at the low ends of existing agricultural fields and to recharge groundwater.

After the water rights primer, we spent most of the morning birding on the irrigation canal bank, in an artificial pond, and in the riparian corridor along the Gila River. This two-hour birding trip may have yielded more species per hour than any other birding venue I have ever enjoyed. What follows is a list of all the birds we encountered, including several new "life-listers" (indicated with an asterisk) for this Eastern birder.

• Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
• Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)
  
• Common Black-Hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus)--rare, pair on a nest
  
• Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)
• American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)
  
• Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
  
• Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) *
  
• Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus)
  
• Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)
• Northern (Red-shafted) Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
  
• Ladder-backed Woodpecker (Picoides scalaris) *
  
• Western Wood-Pewee (Contopus sordidulus)
• Cordilleran Flycatcher (Empidonax occidentalis) *
  
• Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans)
• Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya)
• Ash-throated Flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens)
• Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis)
  
• Cassin's Kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans)
  
• Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus)
  
• Common Raven (Corvus corax)
• Chihuahuan Raven (Corvus cryptoleucus) *
  
• Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripennis)
  
• Violet-green Swallow (Tachycineta thalassina)
  
• Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)
• Bewick's Wren (Thryomanes bewickii)
• European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
• Lucy's Warbler (Vermivora luciae) *
  
• Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens)
• Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas)
• Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra)
• Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
• Blue Grosbeak (Guiraca caerulea) *
  
• Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)
• Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
• Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus)
• Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)
  
• Bullock's Oriole (Icterus bullockii)
  

One thing that truck me when we finished our walk was how much of the avifauna of the grasslands and shrublands of New Mexico is comprised of flycatchers. Of the 37 species we observed that morning, nearly a quarter (eight) were flycatchers.

Gila River flowing southwest from TNC's Gila River Farm Preserve

As we were driving out of the preserve after our walk, headed for the Catwalk National Recreation Trail, we came across a huge King Snake stretched across the road. The rest of the group, which was following in cars behind us, stopped to see the snake, and then gently encouraged it to move off the road.