The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Common in summer, the vociferous and aptly named Yellow-breasted Chat.

May 5, 2025

I spent the night at Hermit Thrush Lookout, tucked into my sleeping bag and drifting off to shots of Writers Tears and barking elf owls. This morning, a light rain rataplans the metal roof and dampens the woodland, the first measurable precipitation in weeks, but .01 inches is hardly enough to wet the tongue. Less than an inch in seven months… The canyon is a tinderbox.

I brew coffee with an antique burr grinder and my camping French press and sit on the cabin porch listening to the oaks wake to the birds.

A brace of Montezuma quail flush from the dry creek bed.

Five days into May and the yard count stands at 83 species. The winter sparrows are holding, all except dapper-plumaged Lincoln’s, who has no doubt flown off for summer breeding grounds in the subalpine wet thickets and bogs of northern Canada and Alaska. A true snowbird. Like the dark-eyed junco, one of which still lingers in the yard.

But as the wave of sparrows heads to the far north, another washes into the yard from points south. The eye-candy orioles and tanagers—so far three kinds each. Five different vireos. Seven warblers. Half of the 16 flycatchers. Then there are the surprise smatterings of oddballs, like this week’s “russet-backed” Swainson’s thrush (rare) among the hermit thrushes and this morning’s yellow-breasted chat.

Spring migration is the time of year when the yard sees both species of Thrush, the Hermit, which winters here, and the Swainson’s, which passes through on its way to Canada from South America. This is the “russet-backed” Swainson’s Thrush.

This time of year, I expect anything. It’s what gets me out of bed at first light. Gray catbird? Why not? Hooded warbler? It’s happened before. Flame-colored tanager and yellow grosbeak and orange-billed nightingale-thrush? Check, check, and check. A blue mockingbird would be nice…

And cowbirds. More cowbirds. My Merlin ap “bird of the day.”

It bears repeating, as I do every spring when the so-called “brood parasites” show up in the yard, that I have an affection for cowbirds. The brown-headed kind and the fiery-eyed bronzed. You have to admire their verve. The way the females lay their eggs in the nests of birds like Bell’s vireos, willow flycatchers, and blue-gray gnatcatchers, which then raise baby cowbirds to the supposed detriment of their own young. The way the cowbirds watch those nests and destroy them if the host birds eject their eggs or hatchlings. Mafia retaliation, researchers call it, because it forces the hosts to raise cowbirds if they want to save their own chicks.

What’s interesting, studies show, is that by complying with the cowbirds, those endangered flycatchers and vireos produce significantly more offspring.

I know birders who hate cowbirds—lumping them together with the despicable, like house sparrows and starlings and pigeons. The same who hate feral cats for killing songbirds, except house sparrows and starlings and pigeons. I teach our feral cats to eat only cowbirds, I say to them, my fever rising.

But does anyone really want less cowbird?

During summer breeding, Bronzed Cowbirds follow the migration of Hooded Orioles, their main nest host. Brown-headed Cowbirds (see below) prefer the nests of gnatcatchers and Yellow Warblers.

Thanks for sharing the Big Yard with me! More to come as we close in on 100 species for the month!