The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Migration is on: A MacGillivray’s Warbler visits the fountain for the first time this year.

September 4, 2024

The monsoon plume ebbs back into Mexico and the yard relaxes beneath angled light and dry zephyrs.  Shadows venture out from their summer hiding places, testing a fresh green landscape.  It’ a color that shocks the retinas.  Especially when you’ve been away for most of August—even to a place like North Dakota.  Or Alaska.  Imagine the sturdy hills of New Zealand.

Two months and 11.32 inches of rain will do that.  Transform the Mule Mountains into Middle Earth.

This morning, I feel an urgency among the birds.  The migrating warblers chase insects and each other in blurred yellow streaks—Wilson’s orange-crowns, Nashvilles.  The vireos sing from the oaks, one plumbeous setting off another and then the Cassin’s until the whole canyon is warbling with burry wheeu whee-yous like cat-calls.

Sixty species so far this month.  The trees are moving. 

Orange-crowned Warbler, showing more yellow than usual.

Nashville Warbler, one of the most abundant warblers this fall.

A Cassin’s Vireo on its way to southern Mexico for winter.

The hummingbirds also feel the change.  Dozens crowd the feeders, vibrating the air with sound and wing as the young migrants jostle each other for an open port to refuel before making the long flight to Mexico and Central America.  Currently, rufous hummingbirds far outnumber the others, mostly broadbills and blackchins, Anna’s and Calliope and even the rare Allen’s.  The tiny, plump, tail-pumping Calliope have always been my favorite, fittingly named for the Greek muse of eloquence and poetry. 

This past Monday, however, my sister-in-law treated me to a stunning hummingbird I’d never seen before.  She texted me as my plane landed in Tucson, saying that a white hummingbird was visiting her feeders and asked if I wanted to see it.  She called it “Casper.”

Our local hummingbird expert Sheri Williamson says this juvenile female Broad-billed Hummingbird has a type of “imperfect albinism” that affects melanin pigments without completely preventing their production. “She's mostly white because the defective melanin fades rapidly with sun exposure. In fresh plumage, she'll be fawn brown wherever a normal female Broad-billed would be iridescent green or blue.”

The albino hummingbird is rare, but not one for the life list like the white-eared hummingbird John Schaefer photographed recently in the Chiricahua Mountains as we attempt to chase and photograph all 16 of Arizona’s hummingbirds.

Photo courtesy of John P. Schaefer (Nikon Z 8 with a 400mm lens, f/5.6 1/2000 sec. ISO 2000)

Speaking of my life list, I didn’t reach 500 during our fishing and birding adventure in Alaska.  But I did gain a few new birds—like marbled murrelets and black-legged kittiwakes and those darling tufted puffins bobbing in the dark waters of Prince William Sound while we fished for halibut and lingcod.

Want to know more about Alaska?  Scroll on...

Greater Yellowlegs.  Our first bird sighting in Alaska at Potter Marsh on the Seward Highway toward Allan Norville’s home on the Kenai River at Soldotna, our destination for the day.

A Bald Eagle watches over the quaint fishing village of Seldovia, Alaska, where Virgil, our pilot extraordinaire, flew us in Norville’s Otter float plane.

Black-legged Kittiwakes (life bird #492) nest in large colonies on steep cliffs above open ocean.  Look closely and you might see a few Glaucous-winged Gulls, one of the most common gulls we saw on the Kenai Peninsula.

Norville’s Otter.  How to travel in Alaska, and the only way to reach Evans Island where Allan hosted us at his lodge for a long weekend of fishing.

The Harding Icefield lies between the Kenai River and Allan’s lodge at Evans Island.

Allan’s daughter, Patti Specter, our magnificent chef and companion, treated us every evening to fresh-caught fish—grilled coho salmon and lingcod, rockfish veracruz, fried halibut.

Allan, Roman, Andrew, Roman Jr. me, and John with the day’s catch of halibut, Pacific cod, black bass, yelloweye, and lingcod.

My special thanks to John Schaefer who graciously invited me on a trip of a lifetime.  Till next time: Let’s go photograph that plain-capped starthroat!

More to come!