The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A male Anna’s Hummingbird on a frosty morning.

January 10, 2024

Yesterday, after a Pacific storm turned the air to ice during the night, I woke to 15 degrees and busted pipes.  Despite the heat tape, the foam insulation and pipe wrap, the incandescent bulbs plugged into thermostatically controlled outlets, the schedule 80 still blew out.  Liquid water turning solid with a 9 percent expansion.  Split brass.  Shattered PVC.

Fortunately, with the turn of a few valves, the house still had water. The fountain still tricked over stalactites of ice.

I spent the morning trading out blocks of hummingbird nectar for fresh liquid—and then trading them out again until the yard climbed above freezing.  For months, a pair of Anna’s hummingbirds has claimed the place, one male and one female after all the other hummingbirds departed south for the winter.  So, I keep a few feeders filled, marveling at how a bird that weighs less than a nickel deals with bitter temperatures that rupture insulated pipes.

I know.  Torpor.  A kind of suspended animation, like hibernation, where metabolic activity—heart rate and respiration—slow to a minimum.  For Anna’s hummingbirds, a heart that beats 460 times each minute at rest slows to 50 beats while a body temperature of 107 drops to 50 degrees F.  Deep unconscious slumber.  I understand this intellectually.  But, after 14 hours of darkness and cold, the kind that sends me to my blankets and quilted heated mattress pad, each morning I see these feathered nuggets perched outside my window feels like the miraculous.

The Big Yard is averaging 25 birds a day in January, including a pair of overwintering Anna’s Hummingbirds. This is the female. 

On this freezing morning, I watch birds from my kitchen window.  The wife and I celebrate 43 years of marriage and I’m baking almond roll, her favorite. 

While she remains in bed.  In torpor.

Species #38 for January, the first Green-tailed Towhee in a month, spotted at the fountain between rolling out yeasty dough and spreading almond filling.

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