The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Lister

American “Blue Shanks” Avocets at Whitewater Draw

Day 39 of the Quarantine (April 21, 2020)

            I’m up at 5:30 am for Whitewater Draw and American avocets, which I’m hoping to add to my county list.  I’ve started checking my email just to get the daily eBird alerts.  A half hour later, I have the refuge to myself (again), and within ten minutes I spot a pair of white-and-black birds with rusty heads feeding near shore in the north pond.  The two plunge their long, curved bills into quicksilver water, sweeping the depths for insects and crustaceans. 

I take a hundred pictures.  Some of them even in focus.

Recurvirostra americana: literally, the American with the upturned snout.  Sounds a bit snooty to me.  Forget the bald eagle.  Considering this country’s response to the pandemic, how “America First” has become a populist motto, how the US has filed to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and is halting funding of the World Health Organization, I’d advocate for avocet as our national symbol.  I can see it on the Great Seal of the United States, the proud bird rising with wings outstretched, one webbed foot holding an olive branch, the other a clutch of arrows, its recurved beak lifted and gripping a waving scroll:  E Pluribus Conundrum.  From many, you get problems.   

Avocets get the nickname “blue shanks” for their slender pastel legs the color of cold.  The bird’s name can be traced back to the British ornithologist Francis Willughby, who in 1678 called them the “Avosetta of the Italians” after the bird made a surprise visit to England.  The etymology has been lost, but the word could literally mean, “pretty bird” from the Latin avis and satis.  Either way, the Swedish taxonomist Carl Linneaus sealed it when he assigned the name Recurvirostra avosetta to the pied avocet in 1758.

            One theory about the origin of the name involves more about the way the bird looks.  Apparently, the pied avocet with its black cap and black-and-white body resembled the clothing worn by lawyers in Europe in the 17th century.  Those high-minded barristers in their piebald robes and prominent prows were called advocates.

I’ll stay with “pretty bird.”

The avocets stare at me with their dark, beady eyes and haughty smirks that say: “Oh, look, a human without his flock who has nothing better to do than count birds in his PJs.”