The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

The first yard bird of 2022: Spotted Towhee.

January 3, 2022

The New Year slams the Big Yard with icy rain and snow.  And then the sky peels open to stars and the air drops to 21 degrees F.  Fangs of ice hang from the Covid fountain but, surprisingly, the monkeyflower still blooms from its thick, green drapery, refusing in its way the Gregorian reset.

Wrapped in a blanket and seated under my porch at the edge of nature, I watch for birds.  Not much is happening; the birds are smarter than I am.  All the same, this is my place in the world that heightens my senses and propels me to wonder.  I might even call it joy.

I’ve been reading Charlie Hailey’s book, The Porch, about his place on the Homosassa River in Florida where he spends his days and notes the subtle cues from nature that well up all around him.  “A porch is an extraordinary vehicle,” he writes, “for becoming sensitive to variations, large and small, and to reflect deeply on them.  A porch welds experience to idea like nowhere else.”

Today, experience and idea are locked together in ice.

White-crowned Sparrow, yard bird #2, as the calendar resets for the year and the counting begins anew.