The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A Yellow-billed Cuckoo flies 4500 miles to tell me it’s going to rain.

August 20, 2022

A white mist gathers.  Heavy clouds lower themselves into the canyons of the Mule Mountains and roil the air as I work on the gabion in the creek bed.  Placing rocks to control the flow.  As a writer, the words I put on the page tell me what they want to be; and now, even the stones in my yard speak to me about how I must arrange them.

There’s urgency.  A storm crow calls from the oaks in presage of what is to come.  Never before has a yellow-billed cuckoo visited the Big Yard for an entire week.  Every morning it delivers its haunting warning. 

Flood.

A Virginia’s Warbler stops by the yard on its way to the mountains of southwestern Mexico for the winter.

A Nashville Warbler heading for the woodlands of Mexico.

Long-distant migrants, Western Wood-Pewees spend the winter in mature mountain forests of western South America.

A Cordilleran Flycatcher migrates to the pine forests of Mexico.

The season’s first southbound warblers pick through the chokecherry for caterpillars.  Virginia’s and Nashville warblers mix with black-throated grays, hopscotching from branch to branch, tree to tree.  Migrating flycatchers chase our bloom of insects to refuel for the return journey.  Western wood-pewees and cordilleran flycatchers station themselves on fence tops to launch sorties on unsuspecting lepidopterans.    

And, each evening, a single common poor-will sends out its lonely plea from the darkness of the road.

But it’s the cuckoo, heard more than seen, that captures my attention.  All week, I’ve followed the sound of its call around the yard, peering into the trees and seeing nothing. Only twice has the long-distance migrant from South America stepped into the sunlight to pluck fat hornworms to feast on, giving me a rare photo opportunity.

 I like to think the storm crow humored me for my efforts, knowing there would be less pleasurable efforts in my immediate future with the rising water.

The workshop with six inches of water.

Thanks for supporting The Big Yard! More to come!

Here’s a link to the article about the recent first state record, Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush: Arizona Bird Journal