The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

April 4, 2025

Coming up for air.

March is done and April leans in. After four weeks and more than 500 “man” hours of dragging timbers and lumber and sheathing and metal and fasteners a hundred feet uphill and lifting it all into place, after ten-hour days (often working in the dark with headlamps) bookended with Advil and topped off with mescal, after the gouges and bruises and cramps but no real injuries (“except mental,” as the son-in-law says), the off-grid writing shed is nearly complete.

This morning, we carried the burgundy leather recliner, a gift from my late mentor and friend, into its windowed corner of reclaimed hardwood flooring and cedar plank siding.

The winter-resident hermit thrush, who surveyed our progress each day, gave his approval. No permit required.

The perfect spot for writing…or naps.

The lantern trail to the writing “shed.”

Where it all began in early March.

Setting the rafters.

The completed redwood porch with oak posts.

The front porch under the reclaimed metal roof.

The writing desk.

We finished just in time. The thrush will be migrating to breeding grounds in Arizona’s high eastern forests soon, exchanging places with our summer birds. Which are already arriving. Standing on the redwood deck from our elevated place among the oaks, we witnessed the season’s first turkey vultures tilting their broad wings into the wind. Painted redstarts, the earliest of the warbler migrants, tangoed along tree branches. A single Hammond’s flycatcher, first of the ten-strong Empid “gnat-master” clan on its way from the Tropics, snapped up invisible winged insects while a male broad-tailed hummingbird kissed the hanging copper lanterns marking the trail. Enchanting. And, as evening closed in, sixpacks of white-throated swifts hurled across the canyonside.

With all the construction noise—the roaring electric generator and whirring blades and gunshot framing nailer—there were always birds.

Yes, the place is magical.

The first flycatcher of the season, a Hammond’s Flycatcher, keeps watch over our work.

Painted Redstarts always herald the warbler migration through the Big Yard.

One of eight species of hummingbird now visiting the yard: the Broad-tailed hummingbird.

And the oranges and jelly dish are out! The “Yucca” Orioles have arrived!

Magical.

Thanks for staying with me as I recover back on the porch watching birds!

More to come!