The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A pair of Zheng’s boluochi birds in a ginkgo.

January 7, 2023

My New Year’s resolution for 2023 is to encounter more birds.  To that end, and because I never know what to expect (which draws my eyes to every feathered movement), the daughters have gifted me with a new bird book: A Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and other Winged Dinosaurs. 

I had no idea.  There are more than 300 species beyond the famous Archeopteryx!

But I’m limiting myself to only birds in the yard.  Listing, yes, but no chasing. No rare-bird jetsetting.  No tailpipe emissions toward a carbonized world for my own selfish enjoyment.

Naturalist and author Janisse Ray in Wild Spectacle says nature doesn’t exist to entertain us.  “Nature’s job is to provide essentials, like clean air, filtered water, mediation of the climate...without having to be bothered with us.  Nature’s job is to keep us sane.  Nature’s job is to blow our minds.  Its job is to provide services that cannot be measured in money: sanctuary, peace, beauty, knowledge, wisdom.”

This is how I see “birding,” the hyperactive, obsessive cousin of birdwatching.  Pure entertainment.  I’m not talking about a walk in the park with binoculars or a drive to the lake with a spotting scope to see what’s new on the feathered front.  Birding is rarity-driven.  The rare-bird-alert-chasing, checking-off-the-box, listing-for-list-sake, see-it-and-leave-it, hypercompetitive bird-spotting.  There’s nothing passive about this knock-kneed breed of thrill-seeker.  As the Steve Martin character in the 2011 film The Big Year insists through clenched teeth: “It’s called birding, not birdwatching.”

Birder extraordinaire Sandy Komito (author of I came, I saw, I counted) spent less than three minutes with a rare berylline hummingbird at Madera Canyon before moving on to his next alert on the way to his record 725 birds in one marathon year.

This year, I will be marathon sitting in my chair in my backyard, passively birdwatching in my PJs and archeopteryx t-shirt, finding sanity in the winged dinosaurs of the Anthropocene.

In the birds that chase me.

This morning’s Hammond’s Flycatcher, an uncommon visitor to the Big Yard in January.

Another unusual bird for January, the juniper-berry-loving Townsend’s Solitaire.

One of my favorite winter visitors, the mealworm-begging Hermit Thrush.

Going on four weeks and still counting, several rare Cassin’s Finches (this one a male with a female below) have been putting on a good show.

And finally, the energetic winter resident and yard-fixture, Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Happy New Year! Hoping for the best in 2023!