Walnut Canyon Lakes

Wildlife Abounds in an Urban Oasis

Walnut Canyon Lakes in the Fall

Walnut Canyon Lakes has been my home for nearly ten years. It’s not exactly Walden Pond, but it inspires me nonetheless, especially when I am out there with my camera in hand.

What looks like an ordinary pond at first glance turns out to be something much richer. In a town surrounded by forest and high desert, open water is rare, and anything with water quickly becomes a magnet for wildlife. Over time, these two small lakes have become one of Flagstaff’s most popular birding hotspots — and my favorite place to wander with a long lens and no plan in mind.

Walnut Canyon Lakes in the Summer

Depending on the season, the lakes can feel like a revolving door of migration. Ducks and geese raft across the surface. Wading birds stalk the shallows. American Robins and Cedar Waxwings strip the Russian olive trees of fruit while seedeaters scratch through the grass and raid backyard feeders. In winter, when everything else freezes, the circulated water stays open, drawing in anything wild that has a need to drink or rest.

Robin, Juniper Titmouse, Cedar Waxwing and Northern Flicker (Clockwise From Top Left)

When the ponds finally do ice over, the mood shifts. Waterfowl slip and slide across the frozen surface like clumsy skaters. Except for the occasional sound of the cracking ice, the lakes are quiet and calm.

Waterfowl Slipping and Sliding on the Ice

Bald Eagles arrive every January and perch in the dead snags along the nearby Campbell Mesa hillside. I like watching them from below, wondering what goes through their minds as they sit for hours, motionless except for that steady, swiveling head. Occasionally I will scramble up the slope for a closer look, photographing the eagles from a respectful distance with my telephoto lens.

Bald Eagle in a Dead Tree

Bald Eagle Pair in a Dead Tree

By early summer, the same American Osprey pair will return to their weathered tree across the road from the lake. They repair their nest, lay eggs, raise their young and then, in September, separate and vanish toward their winter destination in South America. Watching an osprey dive headfirst into the lake after a fish — wings tucked, splash exploding outward — never gets old.

Juvenile Western Osprey

I have had my share of surprises too. A Greater Roadrunner, normally not seen at this elevation, once trotted across the road toward Campbell Mesa like it had someplace important to be. Mule Deer and Rocky Mountain Elk step down from the mesa to drink in the soft evening light. The pointy-eared Abert’s Squirrels chatter in the Ponderosa Pines overhead. Even the less-welcome visitors — skunks, racoons and the occasional band of javelina — remind me that this little patch of water belongs to everyone.

Mule Deer and Abert's Squirrel

One day, a copper-colored shape stopped me in my tracks: a White-Faced Ibis, tall and elegant at the shoreline. Not a typical Flagstaff resident. It let me edge closer for a few photos before flying off. It was around for a few days and then disappeared, as mysteriously as it arrived. I like to think it was simply pausing here to rest on its long migratory journey. I just happened to be lucky enough to witness the stopover.

White-Faced Ibis With Breeding Plumage

I would not call myself a serious birder. I don’t keep a life-list and couldn’t identify every song drifting through the trees. But I love watching them, learning their habits, and photographing them when I can. Every new species sends me down a rabbit hole of research — where it came from, what it eats, and why it behaves the way it does. That’s my version of a life-list.

For all their natural feel, the lakes themselves are human made. My neighbor, who were here from the beginning, remembers when these basins were nothing more than dry ground in the mid-1980s, dug as part of the surrounding subdivision and country club. A few years later they were lined and filled with reclaimed water from Flagstaff’s reclamation plant — recycled, carefully treated, and dependable in our dry climate — creating a small, permanent patch of blue where none had existed before. What started as practical water storage for the golf course slowly became something else entirely: an oasis that birds, deer, elk, and photographers like me now treat as if it had always been here.

Steller's Jay, Lesser Goldfinch, Dark Eyed Junco, Pine Siskin (Clockwise from Top Left)

Life in Flagstaff has a soundtrack, and often it’s a birdsong. Jays chatter in the Ponderosa Pines. Warblers offer thin, flute-like notes from the trees. Just the other day, a neighbor told me he had already counted seventy-one species in our little neighborhood this year alone. That’s not a quiet backyard. That’s a front-row seat to one of nature’s best live performances.

Most days, I simply walk the path around the water and see what’s happening. The light changes. The seasons turn. Something unexpected always appears.

It may not be Walden Pond.

But for me, Walnut Canyon Lakes is close enough.

Sunset at Walnut Canyon Lakes

See more of Jeff’s photography at the Walnut Canyon Lakes Gallery.

Jeff Goulden is a nature, landscape, wildlife photographer and writer based in Flagstaff, Arizona. His work has appeared in Audubon, National Geographic, Nature Conservancy, Wilderness Society and other publications.

See more of Jeff's photography at www.JeffGouldenPhotography.com. Downloads are available at Getty Images. Selected fine art prints and other unique photo products are available at Fine Art America.