The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

The beautiful and elusive Montezuma Quail. You’d never know it is a resident here year-round.

Day 452 of the Pandemic (June 13, 2021)

            A pair of Montezuma quail startle me on my walk this morning, the birds exploding from the manzanita near my feet with pumping wings and squeals.  I haven’t seen this species since the last time my buddy Walker and I camped in the Huachuca Mountains.  He’s on my mind lately. His simple way of living. Without property.  Without a car.  No fancy REI tent, just a tarp tied above his cot. 

I take the quail as a sign, a generous gift from the spirit of a dead friend—yard bird #144 for the Pandemic.

            Walker and I often woke from our sleeping bags to the revving calls of elegant trogons and screes of zone-tailed hawks.  I checked off the trogon last month.  Now, I give every hang-gliding turkey vulture a gander for the telltale tail. The author Edward Abbey, who mentored Walker as a young writer, saw something of himself in the vulture, calling it: “a redheaded, foul-breathed, eater of carrion, maintainer of desert cleanliness, a fully grown gadfly, by gawd, easier to see, easier to shoot down.” If the vulture is Abbey’s spirit animal, perhaps this “vulture mimic” is Walker’s.

Similar in flight to the Turkey Vulture, the Zone-tailed Hawk often soars with them to surprise prey.

Yesterday, a hooded warbler astounded me by materializing at the fountain—and right now, in the middle of June, I would be astounded by any warbler.  Then, at 7 am this morning as I’m waiting for its return, a hermit warbler drops from the chokecherry tree and shows its yellow face.  Followed by a Townsend’s warbler and yellow-rumped warbler.  Three warblers when the high today will be 101?  As it was yesterday?  This feels like another anomaly...especially when an out-of-season Swainson’s thrush steps out of the shadows and cocks its head at me.

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