The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

A Yellow-billed Cuckoo made its first appearance in the yard on June 22, 2010, as Yard Bird #58.

Day 464 of the Pandemic (June 25, 2021)

            After more than a decade, a second yellow-billed cuckoo visits the yard.  What my birding friends call “the quantum vortex” has done it again—and of course it would have to be this summer, the summer of wonders.  On the heels of the monsoon (yesterday was Saint Juan’s Day, the traditional start of the rainy season), a storm crow materializes in the apple tree.

The name “storm crow” probably comes from the southern US where the bird is more common and often perches quietly in tangled thickets and calls with repeated descending coos on the hottest of days.  Folklore says the cuckoo is a harbinger of a coming storm, which can be taken both literally and figuratively.  King Theoden in The Two Towers calls Gandalf “Stormcrow.” He meant it literally. 

            Yellow-billed cuckoos mostly range across the eastern US and south into Mexico, wintering in South America as far as Argentina.  In southern Arizona, the birds arrive in early June to breed (they mostly raise their own young and are generally not considered brood parasites like other cuckoos), favoring riparian groves of cottonwood and willow like those found along the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers.  Because of habitat loss, the population is in decline in Arizona.  The Endangered Species Act lists them as threatened here.

            My two sightings, and one other at Higgins Mine near Bisbee, are the only eBird records of the birds in the Mule Mountains.  The yard’s first yellow-billed cuckoo appeared on a hot, pre-monsoon June almost exactly eleven years ago.

The yard has seen a handful of these one-time wonders over the 13 years of keeping track.  Because I was paying attention, the Pandemic has had several—the painted bunting and purple finch, clay-colored sparrow and gray catbird.  But some one-timers to go back many years: The elegant trogon from June of 2010 that called outside my window, and I chased up the canyon, and appeared the second time last Easter morning.  The white-throated sparrow in November of 2012 that came to the bird bath to drink and has never returned.  That same year, the yard’s first band-tailed pigeon perched in the oak just beyond the chicken coop, but that was the last visitation of the wild, acorn-eating cousin of the familiar domestic pigeon.

No doubt, more will come.  Right now, I’m tuning the quantum vortex for yellow grosbeak.

Two days before the first Yellow-billed Cuckoo in 2010, a female Elegant Trogon became Yard Bird #57.

The acorn (and elderberry)-eating Band-tailed Pigeon, Yard Bird #87 from 2012 and still a one-hit wonder.

Yard Bird #70 (April 2011), the Greater Pewee (as opposed to the Lesser Pewee of the Greater Antilles or just plain Pewee of the Lesser Antilles?)

Yard Bird #43 (November 2009), Sharp-shinned Hawk. I never know when I’ll see one again in the yard.

Yard Bird #13 (September 2009), a rare Allen’s Hummingbird, which is very similar to the Rufous Hummingbird but can be distinguished by comparing the tail feathers. This one (as seen in other photos) lacks the tail notches of the Rufous.

If an oddball, once-in-lifetime-for-the-canyon Great Blue Heron can show up in my neighbor’s yard (thanks for alerting me Hayley and Todd), surely a Yellow Grosbeak will visit mine…

Thanks for subscribing. Yellow Grosbeaks to come!