The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

The Mule Pass Fire of May, 2009, when I first noticed something was burning and alerted my neighbors.

Day 365 of the Quarantine (March 16, 2021)

            The weather turns cold, and we get a dusting of snow, putting us at just over two and a half inches of precipitation for the year.  The worst numbers in six years.  Soon, the foresummer drought will be upon us and I can already feel the wells shrinking as the days lengthen into the approaching equinox.

            I think of “foresummer”—those months April through June when the days grow hot and desiccating winds wick moisture from the soil and turn spring verdure to tinder—as our fifth season.  Fall, winter, spring, foresummer, and monsoon.  In the canyon, foresummer is fire season. 

            So, we weed-whack and clear brush and limb trees, wary of ash fall and the smell of burning oak leaves.

A slurry bomber above Mule Pass. The scene from the highway where sheriff deputies evacuated us until hotshots had control of the blaze.

            But foresummer also means birds.  As the migration peaks, thirsty travelers seek water.  My Covid fountain drew in 30 species this morning.  In a month, it will be 50.

            Today’s rare bird alert shoves me in the direction of a pond at a golf course in nearby Sierra Vista.  American white pelican!  Too hard to pass up.  I park at the Pueblo Del Sol club house and slip along a row of stucco-walled townhomes, following an asphalt path to the fairway.  But before I get far, an official in a golfcart pulls me over.

            “Can I help you?” he asks in a voice that clearly means I’m busted by the golf course patrol.

            “Have you seen any pelicans?”  I say, knowing it sounds ridiculous and thankful the wife insisted I change out of my pajamas before leaving the house.

            “Any what?  You can’t be out here.”  He looks at my binoculars and then tilts his head to the long camera lens hanging at my side.

            “Someone reported a pelican in the pond,” I point toward a rise in the center of the fairway and a clump of mesquite trees.

            “Yeah, and someone reported you too.  It’s not safe to be walking around here.  Get in.”

            I think he’s escorting me off the property and back to my car, but he takes me to the pond.  The American pelican, a bird out of the Oligocene with a bill and gular pouch unchanged for 30 million years, paddles among dozens of American wigeons a quarter its size...trying to look inconspicuous.

            “A wonderful bird is the pelican...” I say, taking pictures and quoting Ogden Nash for my driver. 

“Yes, but I think this one is lost,” he says.

            It turns out he’s also a birdwatcher.

The American White Pelican summers in Canada and the northern US where it nests on islands in large lakes. It winters in southern California, along the Gulf Coast and Mexico. In Arizona, they sometimes visit ponds during migration.

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