The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Lister

Feb 16, 2021

Day 46 of the Quarantine (April 28, 2020)

I drive in the predawn darkness following Banning Creek from my yard to where it drains into the San Pedro River—all for a look at a reported northern beardless tyrannulet. The tiny flycatcher, whose name is longer than the bird itself, as birders say, migrates from Costa Rica to southeastern Arizona when the planet leans on its axis toward summer.

The name northern beardless tyrannulet suggests the existence of a southern beardless tyrannulet, and when I looked it up, indeed there is, one whose range also includes Costa Rica but turns south and extends as far as Argentina. It’s like at some time in the deep past, a family of central beardless tyrannulets had a falling out, split up, and went off in opposite directions.

And why beardless? Why describe a bird for something it doesn’t have, namely, the bristles around the bill that other flycatchers sport? (It’s like describing a kind of writing that isn’t fiction as “fictionless,” and who would do that?) How would you like to be named after a deficiency? After all, there isn’t a northern bearded tyrannulet, but if there were, I’m sure the bird would be longer than its name.

I head for Kingfisher Pond, the posted location of the tyrannulet. But it’s not there, at least not within earshot. Other new arrivals, yellow-breasted chats, call from the willows and cottonwoods. The name—both the hue and the nuisance—fits the large, colorful, and noisy warbler that winters as far south as Panama.

It’s that time of year. The chats chat. Tanagers chase tanagers. Even the resident great blue heron has tucked herself into a nest of fresh sticks.

I trace the river downstream until I’m almost back to the highway. The temperature has risen from the low 60s into the 80s and it isn’t yet 8 o’clock. I’m overdressed. Just when I’m about to give up, I hear a delicate se se se seet among all the bird chatter. I stop and wait. Nothing. I move down the trail and stop, and then I hear it again. I pull out my phone and punch iBird to play a recorded call. When I look up, the bird is watching me from a willow branch 20 feet away.

Of course, my camera and long lens are in my backpack, but the tyrannulet flits around me, waiting patiently while I fumble with my gear and finally make a visual record of only my second sighting, the first more than 14 years ago.