The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

Tony Paniagua (left) and Bob Lindberg of Arizona Illustrated.

February 7, 2022

Two years with Covid and 900,000 deaths in the US.  I look back to the beginning of this blog in March of 2020 when the country entered a National Emergency two days after the WHO declared the Pandemic.  When the wife and I started practicing social isolation (but not with each other), shrinking our lives down to minimum exposure.  When I set a goal (100 species) of how many birds I could see from my back porch in my pajamas.

I make jokes that the only regret I have in life is not having changed my clothes more often.  But who knew the virus would touch us all so profoundly?  There have been deaths in my family.

This morning, I talk with Tony Paniagua and photojournalist Bob Lindberg about my spiritual connection to the birds in my yard, how nature in general offers a way through this time of upheaval and despair.  How all of what we experience as humans is real and unavoidable but how wildness grants perspective.  Pain wants us to focus on the self.  But life is greater than the one.  Nature shows us what the writer and poet Charles Siebert calls “The wide accident, the inherent anonymity of existence.” 

In this I find comfort.  No “specially chosen before the foundations of the world” for me. The last thing I want is the Universe pointing a gnarled finger in my direction and saying, “Oh, there you are.”

But this is too deep for Arizona Illustrated, so we don’t talk about it.  Instead, we discuss life in this wild canyon of the Mule Mountains.  Living with mountain lions prowling the yard and coatis moving into the house, with trogons and tanagers and marauding jays, with adopted feral cats that come and go as they please but sleep at the foot of our bed.

Tony wants to know if I think of the birds in my yard as pets.

“No,” I say, “though I feel an emotional connection to them...I miss them when they’re gone.  I feed and water them, enjoy their company. Clean up after them...maybe...yes?  Feral pets?

“I want to hang around this place like the feral cats,” he says.

I pause for dramatic effect as Bob points the camera at me. 

“I neutered the cats.”

The Arizona State bird, the Cactus Wren. This one began ratcheting its voice from the oaks only yesterday, a new arrival that visits my yard only a few times each year.

A Ruby-crowned Kinglet checks out the Arizona Illustrated crew.

Another visitor to the fountain during filming, everyone’s favorite bird, the Northern Cardinal.

Rounding out today’s common (but still amazing) yard birds, the American Robin.