The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

The House Wren, a common year-round resident of the yard.

Day 454 of the Pandemic (June 15, 2021)

            Yesterday, while sitting in front of the Covid fountain, the chirp of an unfamiliar bird drew me to the rock wall of the house directly behind me.  House wren?  The tiny mouse-like birds often scurry about the yard.  Or one of the other three wrens?  But this was not a bird, I realized, when the sound fired neurons in my brain that woke a 50-year-old memory of grottoed canyons in the Rincons, which connected me to my friend Walker and the place we recently hiked in those mountains to locate the cave he lived in for many years. 

The metallic trill of a canyon treefrog. Sound can be as powerful as smell to send the mind down its many rabbit holes.

            I searched along the mortared seams guided by the call. And there, tucked into a space between the stones, a thumb-sized amphibian the color of granite stared back at me with goblin eyes.  Canyon treefrogs have announced themselves in the yard only rarely, and each time it astonishes me to know they live in our dry canyon high in the Mule Mountains.  I’ve found them across northern and eastern Arizona in most creeks and boulder-choked drainages, but always close to perennial water like that of Sabino, Romero, and Madera canyons.

One of the many Canyon Treefrogs Walker and I found in the Rincon Mountains

            “I’ve built a home for you,” I told the frog as I carefully lifted it from my wall and placed it in my pond.  “Isn’t this perfect?” I took a few pictures of what I believed was very happy amphibian.  My fountain is now complete.

        

   

This morning, my eyes scan the pond and its blooming monkeyflower and algae-slick rocks. A warbling vireo eyes me from a chokecherry branch above the fountain.  The burring sound of a Lucifer hummingbird draws my attention to the nectar feeder where a female alights, feeds, then rests on the clothesline, also eyeing me warily.  All my avian visitors find me suspicious.  

I think about the canyon treefrog in its new residence.  I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of it when I suddenly hear its familiar trill.  From behind me. The treefrog is back at the same spot in the rock wall.  Calling boldly. 

It is the sound of its triumph.  The sound of my rejection.

Warbling Vireos are fairly common in the yard from spring until fall.

The Lucifer Hummingbird (female), the rarest of the 12 species of hummingbirds that visit the yard from March through October.

A Canyon Treefrog warms itself on the rim of a plastic bucket. Since the amphibians can change to the color of their environment, this one looks like it lives on my brick wall. Photo: Hayley Smith

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