The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Yard bird #177: Common Ground Dove

October 30, 2024

From my earliest memories, birds have always soothed me.  I felt this before science proved it.  Living in urban places, I’d escape to pocket parks and vacant lots and walk among birdsong to ease my overactive brain.  I’d pass long hours watching the trees for feathered movement whenever my nerves burned beneath my skin.  Birds are the very definition of becoming, always in motion, probing and needling and botanizing leaves, bark, and dirt in a tireless effort to make tomorrow a certainty.

Whatever my state of mind, there has always been the encouragement of birds.

This morning, wrapped in a blanket with the first freeze of the season, I watch the fountain as birds materialize out of the yellowing chokecherry and drop to trickling water to drink.  Cold as much as heat drives thirst, it seems.  Seventy-seven species this month.

Then, another first.  A small dove with spotted wings and scaly breast plummets to the back of the pool and dips its bill into the water.  It’s not an Inca dove, I realize, and grab my camera.  I’ve never seen one here before, although they visit the nearby San Pedro House in summer.  A common ground dove.  An “uncommon” resident of brushy and weedy fields near water across the southern US to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America, according to my bird guides.

Uncommon ground dove.  An encouraging sight.

The latest arrival from the north: Pine Siskin.

Joining the dove, the chipping and Lincoln’s sparrows, the white-crowns and goldfinches and dark-eyed juncos (mostly gray-headed and pink-sided), I notice a pair of pine siskins, newly arrived from the coniferous forests of Canada.

More encouragement.  At least I think they’ve newly arrived, since I’ve been on the Oregon coast the past two weeks.

Also first today, a Dark-eyed “Oregon” Junco, the only kind of Dark-eyed Junco I saw in Oregon.  It’s as if it followed me home. 

Two weeks ago, I returned to Yachats, Oregon, and the beach house at Big Creek with Dick Shelton in the passenger seat.  As we had done many times before.  Only this time he rode in an urn.  He died two years ago in November of 2022.

Two daughters and one son-in-law joined us, the girls and their books and book manuscripts, the boy with his “beach house savory breakfasts” and skills at the grill: feeding us.  Dick rested on a table with a nice view of the ocean.

The sound of Yachats is the thrum of the Oregon coastline.  Not the rhythmic crashing of waves but a constant, untapped hydrokinetic roar of energy released.  Wind to water to sand and sound.  I’d rise at first light and make coffee.  Cape Foulweather Beach House blend to set the mood as landward scarves of fog dimmed the sunlight and misted every leaf and stone and standing shaft of hair.  Glorious sweatshirt weather.  It had been four years.

There were beach walks and mushroom hunting and huckleberry picking and banana slugs and blackberry pie.  As always.  

And writing!  I wrote the first two chapters of The Big Yard: Evolution of a Pajama Birdwatcher.

And, of course, birds!

The appropriately named Surfbird.

The Black Turnstone, like the Surfbird, prefers rocky shorelines.

Fox Sparrows prefer the brushy shoreline high above the surf.

After 13 hours on the road toward home, Dick had had enough in the passenger seat.  It was past 10 PM and we were both exhausted.  I pulled off the I-5 into a rest stop, parked in the darkness near a picnic table, and reclined the driver’s seat as far as it would go.  Dick preferred to remain upright.

I slept through the night without interruption.  Mostly.  We’d been here before.  If there are new stories to tell, so far Dick is keeping them to himself.

A pair of Bald Eagles discover the discarded remains of a King Salmon (lower left).

First Huckleberry haul. Pie or jam?

Forest harvested Chanterelles (right) and Coral Fungus fried in butter for dinner. Delicious. Especially the Coral Mushrooms!

Who doesn’t love a Banana Slug?

Thanks for reading! More of the Big Yard on the way—winter is coming…