The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

MacGillivray’s warbler, one of 16 warblers that pass through the Big Yard during spring and fall migration.

September 2, 2022 

September is the month that leans into change.  Attenuated light softens the landscape and shadows lengthen like dark fingers venturing out from under their summer hiding places.  I feel the earth tilt away from the sun.  The birds feel it too.

Last month the Big Yard hosted 78 species of birds, the numbers boosted in the final week by the migrants turning south for their winter homes.  Like the warblers, seven of them, so far.  The yellow warblers abandoning streamside cottonwoods and willows to funnel through southeast Arizona and Mexico to Central and South America.  Or the orange-crowned and Wilson’s warblers quitting Canada and Alaska.  Or the Nashville warblers from eastern Canada and hermit warblers from the Pacific Northwest—all headed for Mexico through the seine of my yard.

At bird #72 for the month, the Yellow Warbler.

The Orange-crowned Warbler at #73

Wilson’s Warbler #69

Nashville Warbler #57

Hermit Warbler #71

And the vireos, those drab but exuberant songsters with the white spectacles that carry names like plumbeous and Cassin’s and warbling.  All for Mexico.

Sometimes, I imagine a giant sucking sound.

A Plumbeous Vireo the color of lead, #46 for August

The Cassin’s Vireo, #59, the color of jaundice.

A Warbling Vireo at #23

At 78 species for August, the yard came in at 35 in the country, according to eBird.

This morning, I list 57 different birds for the first two days in September and the yard shoots up to #5 in the US.  But who cares about numbers and rankings?  Not when an olive-sided flycatcher, a long-distance migrant (Alaska to South America) and a bird I’ve recorded here only four times in 12 years, materializes at the top of a walnut tree in front of my camera lens.

Followed by a first-ever zone-tailed hawk (yard bird #170), which spent the night in a creekside oak before joining the turkey vultures bending wings toward Mexico.

Change is hard.  I never know what to expect.

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