The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

January 12, 2022

Twelve days into the New Year and the Big Yard has recorded 37 species of birds.  Nothing unexpected—the usual winter sparrows and juncos mixing with the resident jays and woodpeckers—except for a male hepatic tanager, which this time of year eBird considers a “rarity.”

Lesser goldfinches make ornaments of themselves in the bare chokecherry tree, a dozen or so cadmium male and olive female birds waiting their turn for sips of water at the top of the fountain.  They show such improbable patience.  Until the noisy jays blunder in and scatter them.

A male Lesser Goldfinch waits to drink at the fountain after a Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay (below).

The scene on this cold, 35-degree morning reminds me of the trail etiquette I learned while hiking southern Arizona’s deserts and mountains during my youth.  Trail rules like: Those going downhill always yield to those heading uphill.  It’s about ethics.  The same kind I learned from watching TV shows like Happy Days and Star Trek, about family and loyalty, sacrifice and community, about embracing diversity, how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  Or the one. I learned more about compassion from my Leave No Trace backpacker’s guides and Gilligan’s Island than I ever did sitting in church.

On the trail, you give way to those still making the climb because you’ve already been to the summit.  Call it a metaphor for how we treat others who share space with us on the planet.

“How we are moved says everything/About what we are to each other,” writes Amanda Gorman in Call Us What We Carry, her book of poetry that harnesses our collective grief about the Pandemic.  On Tuesday this week, the US gained a new Covid record: 145,982 hospitalizations.  Mostly unvaccinated.

What the Pandemic has done is to lift the concerns of our neighbors to our faces.  It asks us to notice them.  And it asks us to make the right choice.  To be a goldfinch, not a jay.  To step aside for others on the same path.

A Lincoln’s Sparrow scopes out its own path to the pool beneath the fountain.

A Dark-eyed Junco takes stock of the thirsty crowds.

A male Anna’s Hummingbird prefers a private bath, waiting on the Ruby-crowned Kinglet (below) to finish his.