The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

April 8, 2024  Eclipse Day

Sunlight shakes talcum powder on the landscape.  It begins with a nick in the yellow orb.  The breezes of the morning now grow still.  Honeybees foraging in the blooming pear silence themselves.  The air turns cold, and I slip numb fingers into my jacket.  My nose drips.  The chickens scramble to their roost and the old hen tucks her head under one wing.  

Seventy-three percent of the sun darkened at 11:19am.

Hummingbirds frenzy at the feeder as if it were gloaming.  Every port occupied and whirling wings in waiting.  I count six iridescent male broadbills and at least as many ruby-faced Anna’s.  Others circle, a blackchin and a violet-crown.  A pair of rufous chase each other.  I hear the zing of a male broadtail.

Then, the sound of hummingbird wings new to the yard this year, that distinctive pitched thrum that says, “Lucifer is coming.”

The light bearer.

A male—all down-curved bill and bearded with amethyst—barrels to the feeder and scatters the Anna’s and broadbills, commanding its place.  It feeds as the moon slides past the disk of the sun.

Bringing back the light.