The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

July 12, 2023

After a stalled monsoon start, the sky finally opened yesterday afternoon with a terrific and frenetic thunderstorm rising out of Sonora to drench the Mules with hard, fat rain and set Banning Creek gushing with liquid mud.

Half an inch of glorious precipitation following six weeks of skin-cracking dry heat.

Then, at midnight, more rain, another half-inch shimmering on the metal roof that continued off and on until now.  I sit in morning half-light in my summer skin, damp with monsoon air and breathe the pungency of a sated woodland.

The Arizona Woodpecker is our only brown and white woodpecker. The red cap says this is a male.

  

The only bird venturing out in the rain is an Arizona woodpecker, toeing the suet block.  The woodpecker, one of seven woodpeckers that visit the yard, is named for our state despite 99 percent of its range extending across the pine-oak woodlands of Mexico.  The bird barely reaches the US in southeast Arizona.  

No other of Arizona’s 570 species of birds is named for the state.  Not even the state bird.

As my late friend and mentor might say: The state bird of Arizona is the California quail.

Coastal sage brush, habitat for California Quail and many other California birds.

Last week, the planet reached the hottest day ever recorded four days in a row, an average reported by the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.   To escape the heat, the wife and I fled the Southwest for our favorite California beach at Dana Point.  There were other reasons for the eight-hour-drive—family obligations—but we took advantage of them to watch fireworks off Doheny State Beach, chase feeding blue whales on Captain Dave’s catamaran, and hike the headlands of native coastal sage scrub in search of birds named for California.

Arizona could learn a few things from California about naming birds.

The California Scrub-Jay, formerly the Western Scrub-Jay before the population was split into the California species and the one we have in Arizona, now called, unfortunately, the Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay.

Other denizens of the coastal scrub, the California Thrasher and (below) the California Towhee.

A threatened bird found only in the coastal scrublands of southern California and Baja California, the California Gnatcatcher (what else?). This one, with its black cap, is a male in breeding plumage.

Since I couldn’t locate a California Condor, I settled on this, a juvenile California Gull.

The jetty off Dana Point offers the best views of the spectacular 4th of July celebration.

Blue Whales are making a comeback—we saw seven off Dana Point, including a female and her calf. Twenty years ago, Blue Whales were a rarity here but not unheard of (see below).

The wife and I and our three daughters from 2006, photo courtesy of Captain Dave (who would soon turn it into a brochure!).

Dana Point from The Strands Beach, home to some awesome grunion runs!

Thanks for indulging me! More yard birds to come next time!