The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

On its way to western Mexico and Central America, a female—or possibly immature male—Painted Bunting stops by the yard to drink from the fountain and feast on ripening elderberries.

Day 577 of the Pandemic (October 16, 2021) 

            Youngest Daughter has returned from two weeks on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.  She texted a photo of her sitting on rimrock, her outfit perfectly complementing the incarnadine canyon walls of the Precambrian Dox Formation.   I asked her how she managed to have matching clothes.  She said it was the dirt.

            She’s following in the wake of Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover, two women who, in 1938, were the first botanists to study the plants of the Grand Canyon.  She’s mostly pulling invasive weeds with modern women botanists.  Research for a book, she says, that W.W. Norton will publish in 2023.

            She tells me about Florence Merriam Bailey, younger sister of the eminent scientist C. Hart Merriam and the “First Lady of Ornithology” who wrote Among the Birds in the Grand Canyon Country.  “She spent time there in 1929 and 31” YD says, “and has a wonderful description in her book about the ravens: ‘Sometimes at the lowest point of their descent I could not tell them from their shadows laid on the ground by the rising sun.’”

I, too, watch raven shadows.  Both kinds of shadows, common and Chihuahuan.

But today, I’m enthralled by buntings.

I’ve seen only two painted buntings in my life, both times in my yard.  In my PJs.  Today’s bunting showed at the fountain, so gray I could not tell it from a dark-eyed junco in the rising sun.  But the camera revealed not a “plain green” as eBird describes it, but an astounding green, a pastel somewhere between seafoam and fern—a color unlike any other bird that has visited my yard.  In my mind, the female is a clear rival of the oft-touted male painted bunting that looks like it stumbled into a child’s Crayola watercolors. 

In the evening, I cut all the rhubarb from the garden.  The javelina have been sniffing around and yesterday my neighbor chased a boar out of the yard after I left the gate open.  Last year, no rhubarb.  No pie.  Only garden-fattened desert “pigs.”

I make crust the way my mother taught me.  Then, in a large bowl, I dump in chopped rhubarb and strawberries, stir in a cup of sugar and half a cup of flour, sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon.  Melted butter helps the mixture stick together.  I beat the last egg (the chickens are molting and refusing to lay) and brush the yellow goo over the first pie shell and spoon in the filling.   The second shell goes on top, edges tucked and crimpled and brushed with more egg.  Sprinkle with sugar and slice three holes for steam.  Bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees F. to pop the crust, then reduce the heat to 325 F. for another 45 minutes.

Perfection.

It’s the same recipe for all my fruit pies—blackberry from Yachats, Oregon, raspberry or apple or peach from the garden, even frozen blueberries.  Sugar, flour, cinnamon—except for apple I never use cinnamon, only fresh-grated nutmeg.

Thanks for subscribing! Still more to come…less pie and more birds!