The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

November 17, 2023

After two weeks in gloomy, face- and finger-numbing North Dakota, I return to unlayered and shirtless glory in Bisbee.  The merino socks and gloves, basewear and balaclavas, the wool-lined Marmot jacket, are back in the closet until my next subarctic adventure.  

Even with the 12-hour days of deconstruction, plumbing, and remodeling of a 100-year-old home in Grand Forks, I talked the son-in-law into walking the trails along the Red River each bitter morning in our matching khaki knit beanies and Carhart boots.  There were birds to be seen, I assured him.  Specifically, birds I had never seen, like the secretive and mysterious grail-bird (for me), the snowy owl.  I would settle for a barred owl, another life bird that people had reported at the river.  So, with our Yeti mugs of Caribou lattes and Mint Conditions, my camera and binoculars and runny nose, we plowed through mud and snow to scan the naked hardwoods for feathered lumps and darts.

The son-in-law, birdwatching in subfreezing weather with his coffee (extra espresso shots) and pocket hand warmers. He never looks cold. He’s from North Dakota.

In all, I listed 52 species on eBird for the trip, including a close encounter with four Harris’s sparrows at the gates to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.  I checked off other life birds as well.  American tree sparrows flocking and feeding among the dry sedges of Forest River Park in Fargo.  A rough-legged hawk hovering for voles like a harrier above the Sunbeam Trail in Grand Forks.  Dozens of Bohemian waxwings and a single, blushing, male pine grosbeak plucking frozen crabapples from trees lining Grand Forks Greenway and Lincoln Park.

But no owls. 

Harris’s Sparrow, life bird #466, under Devil’s Tower (above).

American Tree Sparrow #467, a northern bird I would never see in my yard in southern Arizona.

Bohemian Waxwing #469, another northern species. These were often in large flocks that included Cedar Waxwings, Purple Finches, and American Robins.

And life bird #470, the Pine Grosbeak.

From eBird I knew about recent reports of at least two barred owls in the Grand Forks area.  When I contacted one birder, she gave me directions to the river path.  Another birder I bumped into offered to show me the owls’ “favorite tree.”  For three mornings we visited the place, peering among the knobby branches for a disk-shaped face and liquid-black eyes.  Nothing.  Then, on the morning before our departure, a noisy mob of crows alerted me to something moving deep in the forest.  Mottled tawny wings flying low through the thick trees.  I stumbled after it and waited.  More crows.  I could barely make out a suspicious shape at eye level.  The bird was huge—much larger than I expected—and then it turned its head and looked at me with obsidian eyes. 

Life bird #471.

On our way home the next morning, one of my new birding friends from Grand Forks texted me a photo of a large white blob in the center of a brown field.  She’d just found the season’s first snowy owl.

I was going to need more layers.

A White-throated Sparrow hanging with its flock at the Japanese Gardens in Grand Forks.

Downy Woodpecker, one of five species of woodpeckers I spotted including the gorgeous Piliated Woodpecker.

Unlike the son-in-law, I was always freezing.

Thanks for subscribing! More coming soon now that I’m back in the Big Yard…