The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

Life Bird #455, the Oak Titmouse, outside the Skylark Inn at Lucerne, California.

Day 340 of the Quarantine (February 17, 2021)

            We returned yesterday from Lucerne in northern California, a weekend turnaround trip of 2200 miles.  I could say I was chasing a rare, never-before-seen bird of some kind, but I don’t do that anymore.  At least I won’t chase birds only to list them...unless I’m wearing pajamas.

Instead, the wife and I delivered her mom to her sister due to an urgent family emergency, which turned out to be less urgent and less of an emergency than originally thought. Call it necessary but not expedient.

            Here’s an encapsulation for how the trip went:  I spent four hours attempting to screw together a fake-maple, two-drawer file cabinet with picture instructions that included 17 steps involving various-sized fasteners, cam locks and dowels, and other cheap hardware.  When I got to the last drawer and discovered insufficient parts to complete the job, I smashed the whole cabinet and threw it in the dumpster. 

The most satisfying moment of the day.

            All the same, I did manage to wander the mist-soaked neighborhood and the shores of Clear Lake and, among the many juncos, towhees, and thrushes, pick up four life birds: the aptly named, oak titmouse, which favors California’s oak woodlands; two other West Coast specialties, the golden-crowned sparrow and ladder-backed lookalike, Nuttall’s woodpecker; and a flyby Bonaparte’s gull with the distinctive thin black bill and black head.  So, the combined 32 hours in the driver’s seat and days working on the house weren’t a total waste for time. 

#455 Oak Titmouse, at one time grouped together with our southwestern woodland, Juniper Titmouse, and called the Plain Titmouse—but nobody likes to be called “Plain.”

The Nuttall’s Woodpecker (#456) should be named for California, based on its range, rather than for some dead English botanist and ornithologist.

Similar to the more widespread White-crowned Sparrow, and another appropriate name for a bird, the Golden-crowned Sparrow, Life Bird #457.

            I recall when the “father of biodiversity,” myrmecologist E.O. Wilson came to Tucson to give a talk and how on the first morning he left his hotel room to walk the streets of the Old Pueblo looking for ants.  He found many interesting species emerging from cracks in the concrete sidewalks and pavement.

Nothing I do will ever be a waste of time as long as I can step outside and watch birds.  They are the unexpected thing carried on wings.  Improbable.  Impenitent. Feathered absurdity and astonishment.

Counterpart to our Canyon Towhee, the California Towhee forages in open woods and suburbs from northern California to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.

Fairly widespread and common, the American White Pelican occasionally even shows up in Arizona in some golf course ponds.

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