The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

Day 494 of the Pandemic (July 25, 2021)

            July is breaking records for monsoon rainfall, across the Southwest and Arizona and in my yard.  We’re closing in on ten inches for the season.  This time of year, I wish for more storage, watching storm-swollen creeks carry runoff through my yard downcanyon to the San Pedro River, to the Gila River, to the Colorado River, and to the Sea of Cortez.  With no guarantee the moisture will return.

            Our monsoon is a seasonal shift of wind that arises from the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California.  As the desert heats up in the early summer, the rising continental air mass creates a thermal low that draws in oceanic air laden with moisture.  The usual westerlies dip south and circulate into our region as southeasterly winds.

            Now things begin to happen.  Miles-wide columns of rising hot air penetrate the upper layers of cool, wet air, boiling over and into brilliant thunderheads that corkscrew upward tens of thousands of feet and generate raging snowstorms high above the bone-dry landscape.  Updrafts accompany terrific downdrafts.  Dust billows, sometimes lifting into giant, 100-mile-wide, apocalyptic storms called haboobs.  Lightning flares.  If we’re lucky, rain will pummel the ground.  If not, hope evaporates, the thunderheads trailing wildfire and dust beneath purple rags of virga like so many dried-up promises.

            These localized, sometimes violent thunderstorms are better described as chubascos, a Spanish word for “squall.” Our summer monsoon wind brings a season of chubascos.

            I hear a groan of thunder in the east.  The wind shoulders in as clouds like black irises glom onto the Mule Mountains.  Thunder cracks above me like a sudden rockfall.  The rain comes as I revel in wet summer skin like a red-spotted toad. 

            Chubasco at the edge of the planet. 

The monsoon as a living, breathing conveyor, carrying the geologic organism of rain: Mexico slides into Arizona, which in turn rushes back into Mexico in a pulsing, thrashing penetration of elementals—air and water meets fire and earth.

            Rain is a holy thing in the desert.  I’ve come across stone pools of rainwater in sun-cracked, shadowless borderlands that are no larger than a baptismal font or carved marble stoup.  Shallow tinajas scattered among hundreds of miles of sand like grace sprinkled from an aspergillum.  Seeds screwed into my socks might germinate at the sight of them.  The desert raises water to the level of a sacrament, blessed by wind and the bone dust of those who have come and never left, those who have knelt and wet their brows with water enough for two fingers. 

            You can always recognize the desert dwellers when the rains come.  We don’t run for shelter.  Our doors fly open and we leap into the downpour, sometimes even flinging ourselves into washes and rivers in wild abandon.

Our season of chubascos powerfully illustrates Mexico’s influence on the state.  We drink the water from Mexico.  From our food and fiestas, language and history, to the migrating birds, to the very weather itself, Arizona is Mexico.

Along with violet-crowned hummingbirds (see previous post), these are some of the birds I expect in the Big Yard as the monsoon season advances...

It’s been 12 years, but I’m determined to photograph a rare Allen’s Hummingbird in the yard this monsoon season, even if I have to discard hundreds of pictures of lookalike Rufous Hummingbirds.

After spending the winter in Central America, Blue Grosbeaks migrate north to northern Mexico and the southern US, usually arriving in the yard with the onset of the monsoons.

Summer Tanagers winter from Mexico to Bolivia and breed in mixed forests of the southern US, preferring cottonwood galleries along rivers in the West but don’t mind the oak woodlands around my yard.

Another tanager, one of three species in my yard, the Western Tanager, travels from Central America to as far as the Pacific Northwest for summer breeding.

Preferring pine forests but not adverse to bathing in my fountain, Grace’s Warblers migrate to the Southwest from as far as Nicaragua.

Counterpart to the Cordilleran Flycatcher (see the recent post from Flagstaff), the Pacific-slope Flycatcher comes through the yard during the monsoon season as it returns to coastal Mexico from the Pacific Northwest.

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