The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Lister

Newly fledged Western Screech-owl. Screech-owls readily use artificial nest boxes.

Day 100 of the Quarantine (June 21, 2020)

            One hundred days of quarantine.  The summer solstice is past, and it’s Father’s Day without the kids and grandkids.  With a recent house wren, I have 94 species of birds for my yard.  My eBird checklist reports 85 consecutive days of birding.  But the eared quetzal has failed to reappear in the Chiricahuas, so I missed it by one day.  I wonder if the Wisconsinite has turned his Jeep Cherokee toward home.

#94 the mousy House Wren, one of four wrens that visit the yard

Day 105 of the Quarantine (June 26, 2020)

            Still no reports of the quetzal, but a turkey hen with ten puffball chicks in tow just came to the yard for water.

            I post to social media five pictures of an ash-throated flycatcher that has been coming to the yard.

“We have several pair using our nest boxes,” Arlene Ripley responds.

            “First the Covid fountain and now I see I need to build some Covid nest boxes,” I write.

            “Indeed,” she says, and posts a photo of an ash-throat standing on a wooden nest box with an insect in its beak.  A fledgling bird’s head is perfectly framed in the entrance hole.

            “I have tools,” I say.  “And the Internet.”  You can learn to do anything with YouTube.  Need to replace a faulty water pump on your washing machine?  YouTube.  Want to sweat in copper fittings to remodel your bathroom with a clawfoot tub your kids dug up in the yard?  YouTube.  Nest boxes?  YouTube has video instructions—type of wood, dimensions, hole diameter—for every cavity nesting species on the planet.

Yard bird #50, Gould’s Wild Turkey with poults

Yard bird #58, Ash-throated Flycatcher, another cavity nester

            Today, I’m constructing nest boxes.

Arlene had said earlier how she couldn’t keep up, that she had so many nests with fledglings that she’d have to report them separately.  “But this morning I got another surprise,” she wrote.  “The south-facing kestrel/owl box, which we were sure was unoccupied (ha ha), has at least two Western Screech-Owl nestlings in it.”

            South-facing box!  I don’t even have one box.  Facing any direction.

            “When I got back to the house, we set up the scope on the box, which we can just barely see from the yard (a little over 100 yards distant) and that's when we saw the second head appear beside the first. We deserve an F for kestrel/owl watching this year!”

Nesting kestrels, owls, and flycatchers.  Once again, I’m behind the curve.  I deserve an F for nest boxes.

I give myself an F for this prefab nest box—even the House Sparrows ignore it

Mocking my hole diameter, the Acorn Woodpeckers immediately began hammering out their own modifications, then quit altogether. Grade: D-

My own design, using a section of previously occupied agave stalk. Even the non-cavity nesters are laughing. C- for effort

A Whiskered Screech-owl sneers at me from its nest cavity

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