The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

A female Rufous Hummingbird sips nectar from a Trumpet Honeysuckle.

May 10, 2024

Last weekend, the wife and I toured the local gardens—Tucson’s midtown desert botanical garden and the northside Tohono Chul, the Phoenix botanical garden, and finishing with the Boyce Thompson Arboretum near Superior.  (Her plan.  She gets ideas.)  I looked for birds but didn’t see anything I hadn’t already recorded in my yard, and not even half as many—especially after an astonishing, record-breaking 63 species on the morning of May 1^st.  But the tour wasn’t so much about birds as it was about plants for birds, particularly plants for birds that the deer and javelina won’t devour. 

I admit I have a soft spot for succulents and all things swollen and knobby-kneed.  Desert rose (Adenium sp.), Pachypodium, Elephant tree.  I have them all.  Although it spends the winters indoors, a rock fig now stretches its gnarly branches over the fountain.  A tuberous-footed tangle called “hottentot bread” (Fockea edulis) rests askew in its pot in the window above my desk.

Got Euphorbia? It’s more like a hernia than a soft spot.

A Desert Rose at Phoenix Botanical Garden in a pot that’s more afterthought than container.

But succulents have little to do with birds.  We came home with a carload of potted trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) for the gazebo, the kind whose red tubular flowers currently bloom across the chicken coop.  Hummingbirds bury their bills deep in the flowers, which erupt from the glaucous foliage most of the year, whether it’s hot and dry or cold and wet.  The deer and javelina avoid its milky sap and the vines withstand temperatures in the single digits.  The honeysuckle matches salvia in its tolerance of browsers and neglect.  Perfect!

The Big Yard’s gazebo under construction. A rusty metal roof is next—then we plant the honeysuckle.

This morning, the red-faced warbler threads through the leaf-draped chokecherry for a third visit to the fountain, trailing the first warbling vireos of the year along with a handsome pair of lark sparrows.  Then, the first yellow warbler of the season emerges from the canopy.  I raise my camera and snap photos.  There’s so much green I must focus and hope the birds step into the open for a second or two. 

Plants!  Delete.  Delete.  Delete. 

In maybe one of two dozen images you can actually see a bird.

Red-faced Warblers are rare visitors to the yard—this year has been exceptional.

Warbling Vireos, fresh from southern Mexico, will spend the summer with us.

Mostly absent from the yard in winter, Lark Sparrows move to our higher elevation with the approach of summer.

A long-distance migrant, this Yellow Warbler (male) spent the winter in Cental America or northern South America.

Thanks for subscribing! The yard stands at 79 species for May…will it reach 100? More to come…