The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A single female Cassin’s Finch comes to the fountain for a drink.

May 23, 2023

Dawn slips in at 48 degrees, still cool enough for flannel PJs, although I’m trading out my wool socks for numb toes.  I pour coffee and fill feeders and the fountain pond, then take my seat under the porch while checking off the usual morning songs of kingbirds, flycatchers, and orioles.  A single mockingbird thinks it’s a cactus wren, which sounds so much better than the car alarm or UPS truck.

This is the best part of the day.

I grab the camera when a lingering Cassin’s finch flutters to the top of the fountain for a drink. “Ah, still here,” I say and take a few photos.  After wintering here since October, its flock—one day in March I counted 43!—departed weeks ago, heading for breeding grounds in the coniferous forests of British Columbia.  But this one female remains.  A rare bird anytime, but as May leans into June, she slides from rare into the “casual” category, which means she’s rarer than rare (birds seen in only three years of the previous nine).

Cassin’s finches only started appearing at the feeders in 2020.

After my depressing post last time about the five birds missing from the yard since 2021, I decided to look over the yard’s “life list” and count the number of new species seen over the past three years.  Some are one-time wonders—like that amazing short-tailed hawk of last October, or the brown creeper or northern parula.  But most are not.  Lucy’s warblers visited the fountain on 33 different occasions from 2020 to 2023.  And the summer tanagers blazed from the oaks over a period of 37 days.

In all, 48 new birds graced the yard in the last three years, more than a third of all the birds I’d documented from the previous 12 years.

Maybe I was just paying more attention.  It was the Pandemic.  And I built a fountain!  During a drought!

People have been reeling since 2019 when the journal Science reported the study, “Decline of North American Avifauna.” Almost three billion birds, 30 percent of the population in North America.  Lost since 1970—most likely due to habitat loss and climate change.  The number is so staggering it leaves you feeling helpless...hopeless. 

Still, despite how I feel (or because of it?), I build backyard water features and hang nest boxes.  I plant native shrubs and trees.  My garden—the chard and tomatoes and peaches—goes to the wildlife as much as to my table.

And, I count the birds.

Of the 48 new species since 2020, Fox Sparrows have made six appearances after the birds first arrived in the yard in April of 2021.  The same as this Vesper Sparrow (below).

Common Yellowthroat.  Two appearances since the first in May 2021.

Purple Finch (female).  Seven appearances since November 2020.

Painted Bunting (female).  Six appearances since September 2020.

Hermit Warbler.  Twenty-five appearances since September 2020.

Grace’s Warbler.  Five appearances since October 2020.

Gray Catbird.  One of my favorite one-time wonders.  October 2020.

And who can forget about this wonder of one-day wonders from last June? The first Arizona state record, Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush.  You can bet I’ll be watching for its return!

Thanks for subscribing! So much more to come—certainly more new birds for 2023!