The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

May 31, 2023  

A gust of wind.  Dust rises in a plume and yellow oak leaves skitter across the ground like marching locusts.  When I turn my head, a roadrunner crosses the yard.  Earlier, a male coo-cooed from the dry hillside above my neighbor’s place and now here he is in the feathered flesh.  The first roadrunner in more than a year.

With seven new arrivals in the last few days, not including yesterday’s astounding first-ever hummingbird, the yard peaks at 90 species of birds for May, number territory entered only a few times since I started counting fifteen years ago. 

But it’s the 13^th species of hummingbird that has me pinching myself.

Last evening, my neighbor, Lucifer’s Mistress, sent me a one-word text: “Berylline.”  She would know.  After last summer’s brief visitation with its cute, buzz-purring chirps and wild, erratic dance at the feeders, she’s been expecting the mythical bird’s return.

That time I was 100 miles away.  This time I scarf three salmon street tacos, hug the wife, and grab my camera and her car keys.  “Want to come along?’ I ask, adding that there will be fresh-baked homemade cheesecake.  With blueberries.

“My list of things I’d rather do is quite long,” she says.  “Starting with my tacos.”

The emerald-green birds are named for a precious stone that ancients say strengthens one’s faith in the gods.  Having seen both (birds and stone), the gemstone pales in comparison.  They range from the pine-oak forests of Central America and Mexico to three of southeastern Arizona’s sky islands—the Chiricahua, Huachuca, and Santa Rita mountains (where a berylline was first observed north of Mexico in 1964).  Sightings regularly trickle out of these mountains since the birds favor our Madrean oak woodlands.  Sometimes they even nest here.  The Mule Mountains rise 7000 feet from a broad valley floor between the Chiricahuas and Huachucas, but there are no records for berylline hummingbirds in the Mules. 

Until now.

Within twenty minutes I saw red.  A deep rusty metallic-red in the wings of a hummingbird among the whirring gray wings of broad-billed, Anna’s, and black-chinned hummingbirds.  Then a green flare in the fading sunlight.  The winged gem making me a believer.

I leave you with a few highlights from the month.

A male Summer Tanager finally joins the Western and Hepatic Tanagers.

This Western Wood-Pewee and the Dusky-capped Flycatcher (below) are now among the yard’s six Tyrant Flycatchers.

Always a yard favorite in summer, a female Lucifer Hummingbird shows off her buffy flanks.

Thanks for subscribing! More birds to come…there be white-eared hummingbirds in these mountains too!