The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

August 5, 2022

Nearly two inches of rain overnight has Banning Creek gushing through the Big Yard, spilling over gabions and clacking with water-propelled rocks the size of my head.  Rabbitbrush bends under the weight of the churn where it hasn’t already uprooted the blue-green shrubs in the afterbirth of the storm.  The sound is enough to drown birdsong. 

I’d plant Apache trout if I had them and then tie an elk hair caddis on my Sage One rod and catch and release and catch until the stream sank into the sand. Flyfishing is about focus more than meditation.  The arc of the line.  The pull of the rod.  Solidarity with place.

I don’t have any trout to return me to my childhood summers.  But I do have tadpoles.

Last week, I drove to Flagstaff to help my granddaughter Gia “rescue” scores of tadpoles dodging ATVs in a shrinking roadside ditch.  “Tadpole heaven,” she called it, before the muddy pools became a roiling vat of tadpole soup as the heat climbed and the borders of their world descended upon them.

She pointed out the way through the ponderosa, following behind her mom and me but giving clear and certain directions.  We had never taken this trail to Gia’s “Forest Camp,” a Montessori summer day camp that connects children to the natural world through “art, science, story, and wonder.”  We were trusting a seven-year-old’s wayfinding.

We had our doubts as the miles piled up, especially when Gia said, “I’ve never seen anything like place this before...”  But even as we considered turning back, she kept us on track.

“Her teachers call her ‘the caboose’,” Middle Daughter explained when I stopped and turned around to check on her.  “She gets distracted a lot. Looking for horny toads.”  That time, she had found and befriended a black stink bug the size of her thumb.

“I can smell that from here,” I told her.

There were bird distractions as well.  Western bluebirds flitted among the tall stalks of last year’s mullein.  Chickadees and nuthatches and brown creepers needled insects from the seams in the bark of pines.  When a pair of ravens flew over us, Gia, a budding birdwatcher, wanted to know how to tell them from crows and then mimicked their full-bodied caws.

Western Bluebirds are a common sight in open meadows and woods around Mountainaire.

As are Mountain Chickadees (above) and Pygmy Nuthatches (below).

Ravens are larger than crows, with stout bills and shaggy throats, wedge-shaped tails and a deep croaking call.

And then, just as Gia said we would, we found her tadpole heaven.

Across the pool’s sheet of brown vellum swam black commas and quotation marks, hyphens and periods, as if we’d located all the unused punctuation from a Cormac McCarthy novel.

Giavanna Sky, making tadpole memories that will last a lifetime.

This morning, a dozen rescued tadpoles circle the depths of the fountain pond, sprouting legs on their way to becoming adult Arizona treefrogs.  At least that’s my guess.  Arizona treefrogs inhabit the northern half of the state above 5000 feet, and I’ve even seen them in the nearby Huachuca Mountains.  Some of them may join my wood frogs, last summer’s venture into childhood.  Others will roam the Big Yard in the Mule Mountains, calling me back in time with their frenzied quacking on evenings after a monsoon thunderstorm.

An Arizona Treefrog in the Sky Islands of Southern Arizona.

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