The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

January 9, 2022

On my way home from visiting a friend in Tucson, I park at the Benson Sewage Treatment Plant to check on the winter waterfowl and pick out a few birds—northern shovelers, canvasbacks, American wigeons—that I’ll never see in my yard.  I’m lame with ducks and need the practice.  Somewhere in the wastewater pond is an “uncommon” common goldeneye, the black-headed, white-bodied diving duck recently reported on eBird.  But I’m not sure I can tell one apart from a bufflehead or merganser.

As I step out of my car, the first bird I see perches on the barbed-wire fence twenty feet away: a fluffy ball of vermilion flycatcher as bright as a maraschino cherry.  I lift my camera and focus on the gorgeous, masked “fire-headed tyrant” and notice something large and white in the pond beyond it. 

Feathered absurdity and astonishment.  All alone in the pungent and shining water, a snow goose paddles toward me.

Vermilion flycatchers are a southwestern specialty (although I once saw one at Audubon Park in New Orleans while visiting my birding friend Herman Kohlmeyer—sorry you missed it Hermie!).  Their range extends throughout Mexico and as far south as Argentina. 

Snow geese are uncommon winter visitors to this part of Arizona, arriving from breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra, although Reid Park has one that apparently has taken up residence there with the domestic geese and ducks.

But seeing these two here reminds me how incredibly special it is to live in this place.  This crossroads of wildness.  This world of neighbors.

Southeast Arizona.  Where the planet’s opposite poles funnel together and connect in the same field of view.