The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Today’s Wilson’s Warbler, although I prefer Toupee Warbler.

April 9, 2022

It is a truth universally acknowledged that birding isn’t about “the wonder of nature and the search for beauty.”  It’s about finding something rare and being the best.  This is the clear message I get while reading The Big Year, Mark Obmascik’s 2004 book about three birders who scour North America on a cutthroat mission to tick off more bird species than anyone else in a calendar year. 

I’m thinking about The Big Year because this past week, 70 miles north of me, a rare Nutting’s flycatcher has been drawing hordes of binocular-clad people.  Obmascik begins his book with the 1997 sighting of a Nutting’s flycatcher near Nogales, a rarity not seen north of the border since “Harry Truman was president and Jackie Robinson was slugging his first home run in an All-Star game.”

Hordes of people on the chase.  I’ll never call myself a “birder.”  Birds are natural.  Birders are not.  I’m a nature watcher.

For me, nature is today’s exhaling plumes of juniper pollen, which leak out of the world and stain my skin, then penetrate my flesh.  Likewise, the birds in my yard share the same air with me.  We trade lipids and proteins and nucleic acids, information that my immune system stores in lymph nodes and chromosomes.  The birds in this place have infected me.  Changed me.  I feel them in my cells.  They are part of me.

“Which is why,” the wife says, reading over my shoulder, “you always want to migrate.”

And I thought 41 years of marriage had cured my wanderlust.  Imagine jumping in a car or hopping on a plane every time the Rare Bird Alert lights up?

A male Calliope Hummingbird, one of the 12 species of hummingbirds that visit the yard.

I feel the flycatcher’s pull, but this morning I sit in the Big Yard and watch the magic.  Seven kinds of hummingbirds crowd the feeders—a male calliope the most recent arrival.  Any moment, a rare lucifer hummingbird could show—my neighbors say a female has been visiting their yard.  And, the warbler action is picking up.  The first Wilson’s of the season, on its way from coastal Mexico to northern Canada and Alaska, joins the Nashville, Virginia’s, and Lucy’s warblers. 

Sixty-six species for April has kept the Big Yard ranked in the top 15 yards in the country on eBird.  Why travel anywhere? Birdwatching is about connection—between the domesticated animal sitting in the chair and the wild animal perched in the tree.

Nashville Warbler, one of 18 species of warbler that will visit the yard.

Virginia’s Warbler

Lucy’s “Mesquite” Warbler

Thanks for subscribing! Up next—maybe the Lucifer Hummingbird?!