The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A Western Tanager eyes the one precious grapevine in my vineyard.

August 26, 2022

Grape harvest time arrives when the number of tanagers peaks in August.  The colorful birds—westerns, hepatic, and summer—target the ripe fruit.  I can tell by their hungry beaks and that gleam in their eyes.  And by the fallen and desecrated clusters.  The holey globes.

A male Hepatic Tanager (above) and immature Summer Tanager (below).

As is often the case with organic gardening in the canyon, it’s a race between feeding ourselves and fattening the wildlife.  The challenge comes with preserving the bounty, and we have limited options:  Freeze, dry, or ferment.

I make wine with the recipe God intended: crushed grapes and time.  Fruit of the vine, which isn’t the grape itself but red, white, pink, dry or sweet wine.  You can see why ancient peoples thought of wine as a gift of the gods.  The miraculous transformation.  Manna from heaven, as it were.  But even manna—like most foods—spoiled after a few days.  Instead, the juice of the grape became an elixir.

And God makes only the best wine, the kind that “gladdens human hearts,” which the Almighty drinks by the liter with his roasted lamb, according to Exodus.  In fact, the Bible mentions wine more than 200 times, nearly as many times as it mentions bread.

“A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou,” writes the famous 11th century Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet, Omar Khayyam.  (Kalamata olive bread, of course!)  The Wife, however, only likes the idea of wine.  So, while I pick and crush the grapes, she passes the afternoon pulling stems and spreading trays for sun-dried raisins. 

I settle on the romantic idea of a jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and cheese.

Today, while my Chateau Nightingale-Thrush foams in its vats, the season’s first Wilson’s warbler peers out of the chokecherry as if checking on the status of the fall migration.  A plethora of Mexican spadefoots—“Gia-toads” from the granddaughter’s tadpole rescue operation—feasts on baby spiders, hand-gathered by the dozens in their webs.  Seventeen inches of monsoon rain has quilted the canyon in green and called out the weed-whackers, the quintessential sound of the end of summer.

Thanks for subscribing! More birds are on their way—fall migration is picking up!