The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Yard bird #79 for the month, Townsend’s Solitaire

October 23, 2022

I wake in the darkness in my own bed to gusts of wind that rattle the windows and metal roof.  The season’s first Pacific cold front shoulders its way into the Southwest, raising the pollen count and dropping temperatures into the nether regions.  The air mass from southeast Alaska intends to knock blooms from their stems, turn the pond and fountain into an ice sculpture, wilt and blacken my tomato and pepper plants.  I am so not ready for this.

As a consolation, the season’s first Townsend’s solitaire alights on a wind-stripped stem in the apple tree.  This is a treat, and I manage dozens of photos.  I’ve seen the gray, long-tailed thrush in the yard only a handful of times in 12 years, mostly in summer.  This one is fond of gobbling up the few remaining chokecherries left by the western tanagers, most of which have departed for Central America in my absence.

The past week has been a blur of sleep deprivation, highway blacktop, and pale green hospital rooms.  Last Monday, my 89-year-old friend and writing mentor of thirty years had a heart “procedure,” what his cardiologist called a transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), to repair the calcified valve and improve his heart function and blood circulation.  Normally, a two-hour operation with anesthesia.  No problem.

Then, in what may be the irony of ironies (or the Universe’s idea of a cruel joke), as surgeons threaded a tube through his body to install a new valve, the calcified valve in his house ruptured under his sink, spewing water from cabinets to tile to kitchen walls.  Fortunately, the wife was there to direct the sweeping and mopping of rising tides in what she describes as a scene from Disney’s Fantasia, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

She also called the plumber.

Dick Shelton is still recovering, along with his house (which is much cleaner) and I’m headed the hundred miles to Tucson for a fourth time in six days.  On my way out, I leave you with the newest arrivals for October...because, even when life is unsettled and uncertain, there are always birds.

Yard bird #78 for the month, Cassin’s Kingbird, always an uncommon visitor this time of year.

Black Phoebe, #77, last seen here in March.

#76 Chipping Sparrow, another visitor returning for the winter.

#75 Clay-colored Sparrow, only the second record for the yard.

And, a first-ever for the yard, Brewer’s Blackbird (female). This one was hanging out in the chicken coop.

Life in the canyon. Looks like I’ll need a neighbor with a chainsaw on my way out.

Thanks for supporting the Big Yard. More birds to come (when life settles a bit).