The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

Homemade bagels from a recipe in the funny novel by Jenny Colgan called Little Beach Street Bakery.

Day 345 of the Quarantine (February 27, 2021)

            The wife informs me, Baptist-raised girl that she is, that the word in Genesis chapter 2 where God creates a “helper” for Adam has been mistranslated.  “The original Hebrew is ezer and it’s used twice to refer to the first woman.  Other places the word refers to military forces or one who fights next to you like a warrior.  Sixteen times ezer refers to God.”

            She’s been reading Glennon Doyle’s Love Warrior, her memoir “of betrayal and self-discovery,” of saving and not saving a marriage and in the end finding a deeper, more authentic relationship with herself.

“I’m not your submissive helper,” she suddenly says, eyes locked on me as if this is news to me and I might attempt to argue her point. “Or, God-forbid, your ‘help-meet’.  I’m your warrior-god.”

“I never had any doubt,” I say, while serving her hot apple juice and a buttered raisin bagel, fresh from the oven. On a plate.  In bed.

            While she recovers from her work week, I clean up the bagel mess in the kitchen and finish my morning routine of animal care—feeding and watering the chickens and rabbit and kitties, filling hummingbird feeders, replacing suet, scattering seed for the birds. 

Afterward, I set up an aquarium for the wood frog tadpoles that arrived in the mail yesterday, adding clumps of monkey flower I collected from the Santa Cruz River at the Ina Road bridge while fruitlessly searching for a northern jacana. I was in Tucson anyway for the writing workshop, the group still meeting in masks and camping chairs at Reid Park.  The jacana lit up the listserv after someone spotted it in the cattails, a single lonely, lost bird from Mexico or Panama’s coastal lagoons but seen in Arizona only a handful of times. 

I saw my first northern jacana at a golf course pond in Casa Grande in 2007, at the time only the 4th record of the species in Arizona.

An Orange-crowned Warbler displaying its namesake, which is often difficult to see.

The Lincoln’s Sparrow is a winter resident of the yard but will migrate to Canada and Alaska for summer.

Another common and abundant winter resident, the Chipping Sparrow can still be found in summer in southeast Arizona where they nest in the Huachuca and Chiricahua mountains.

Today, the first spring transient arrived to bathe at the Covid fountain—an orange-crowned warbler.  Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona shows them as uncommon in February and early March, but for me their appearance signals the start of the warbler migration.  Time to watch for Nashville, Townsend’s, and black-throated grays.  For now, the yard is averaging 26-30 species a day, including the winter regulars like chipping and Lincoln’s sparrows, and the daily “rare-bird report” Cassin’s finches.

            Skunk #34 trapped and ready for relocation.  Peanut butter and a crust of bagel—gets them every time.  Another drive down the mountain trailing perfume from the truck bed.  Another hognose needing a home that isn’t mine.

Bath time for the Orange-crown.

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