The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

The monsoon arrives!

June 21, 2022, Summer Solstice

This morning I suffered a bout of rarebirditis.  An infection probably caused by my recent sighting of the orange-billed nightingale-thrush, a first state record for Arizona, and the hordes of contagious birdwatchers who descended on the Big Yard.  It didn’t help that I was the only one exposed to it.

At my usual perch in front of the Covid fountain, I noticed a distant yellow bird in the neighbor’s yard.  Too yellow.  Too big-headed.  I snapped four quick photos and blew them up on the camera’s LCD screen.  Dark wings, and a large gray bill.  Is that what I think it is?

The bird flew off, and I spent the next half hour stalking the oaks, pausing every few minutes to look at the camera screen, enlarge the image with my thumb, and enlarge the beak with my mind.

My fever kept me hallucinating yellow grosbeak.

It’s not like I haven’t been fooled before.  My Merlin Sound ID app has had me chasing impossible rarities like red crossbills and olive warblers.  Mockingbirds become gray catbirds and yellow-breasted chats.  The chickens tease me by mimicking elegant trogons.  The spotted owl I followed into the darkness one night turned out to be the neighbor’s barking dog.

Maybe I shouldn’t say “impossible” rarities.  As a friend claimed after the nightingale-thrush made its three-minute debut, anything can happen in my yard.

An Elegant Trogon visits the yard in April of 2021.

Another one-time wonder, the Gray Catbird from October 2020.

A Big Yard rarity, the Yellow-breasted Chat.

I should be searching for yellow birds, but at the moment I’m soaked to the skin as a monsoon chubasco hammers the canyon, filling my (now cleared) gutters and rain barrels and bathing the trees in golden light.  Our second thunderstorm in two days.  More than two inches of rain sends muddy torrents downcanyon rather than into the wells.  In its dry state, the ground sheds water—I still may need to order another tanker truck.

For now, I’ll gratefully swing between hooded and Bullock’s oriole for the yellow bird’s ID, accepting the usual over the fantastic. 

My temperature is back to normal in my wet clothes.

A female Hooded Oriole at the jelly station.

A female Bullock’s Oriole.

Thanks for supporting and sharing the Big Yard! More to come!