The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher
April 12, 2025
My Birding Bestie left this morning, headed back to Dana Point, where we first met over snowy plovers and gray catbirds. Dawn arrived a couple days ago for the elf owls, a bird she’d never seen before and one I had boldly promised would accommodate her here in my yard. The owls arrived from coastal Mexico two days before she arrived from the California coast.
Just as if I’d planned it.
At the gloaming hour, after the sun slipped behind Escabrosa Ridge in the Mule Mountains, we set out with cameras and binoculars. Fifty yards from the yard stood the power pole, still standing after two months when Arizona Public Service (APS) dug a hole in preparation for the pole’s removal. A few days ago, I called the utility company: You waited too long, I said. The owls are back.
Dawn and I looked up at the nesting cavity. Nothing. Then, across the road and up the hillside, we heard a soft, squeaky, rhythmic chirping, what Dawn called “little chuckle calls.” Off we went, scrambling through the oak and manzanita in the direction of the sound—and reversing course after a tiny shadow darted out of a juniper and flew back down the hill toward the pole.
When we returned and looked at the cavity again, a face with jonquil eyes and arched white eyebrows looked back at us.
“Oh, how adorable,” Dawn said, as the elf owl stared at us and chirped. “And look, a second one just flew in and back out! It could be a food delivery!”
She had her “lifer cutie owls.”
The next day, we drove two hours to Scotia Canyon in the western Huachuca Mountains, my favorite place in southeast Arizona. As Tucson breached 100 degrees F., setting a record for the earliest triple-digit day since 1894, we hiked along the algae-choked creek among parched oaks and pines in search of neotropical birds, newly arrived at their breeding grounds. The woodland was strangely silent. No calls of kingbirds or gray hawks or elegant trogons. We heard only the melancholy whistles of Dusky-capped and buff-belied flycatchers.
This morning, it seemed yesterday’s heat had brought out the migrating birds. At least in the yard. Dawn and I watched amazed as the season’s first lazuli buntings perched above the fountain, followed by the first black-headed grosbeaks cracking open sunflower seeds at the feeders. Then the warblers, one after another, combing through the flowering chokecherry for insects. Wilson’s, Nashville, Virginia’s, MacGillivray’s. Eight species in all. A near record for one day.
The Big Yard certainly gave her a sendoff!
Thanks for sharing the Big Yard with me! More to come as April heats up! Can you say Tanagers?
Oh my gosh, what a fabulous 2 days. I was only going to spend one night but Ken was so generous with his time, and Karen with her patience of the bird nerds- what a riot. Those owls first off- I love the little field work we had to do. And then to experience the fallout of warblers that we knew had flown in overnight. BIRDS are the best! Thanks for the amazing experience and both of you for what you do for birds. Birding Bestie, Dawn from Dana
Many thanks for contributing to my sanity quest 🙏🏽👍🏽👊🏼