The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

June 26, 2026

The brown crusties are making a racket. Early. Before dawn the pair at the nestbox announces the morning pale with their loud, course keeer keeer keeerp followed by a low whit! Over and over they “sing,” as if everyone in the neighborhood—bird and human—should be so excited about the new day.

Or so excited about their new day…and what it brings. When I focus my camera on one of the birds outside the nestbox, I see there are new mouths to feed. It looks like one less cicada to herald the monsoon.

Some Lord of the flies… We could do with fewer flies, Mr. FLYcatcher! I think, catching a whiff of the bottle fly traps that ring the yard with their bloated contents of black, decaying insects. I swear the turkey vultures tilt their wings over this part of the canyon because the smell carries for miles.

Flies, gnats, mosquitoes, and—worse—scorpions…the flycatchers and bats, whip-poor-wills and elf owls are letting us down.

This has been a June for the exoskeletal.

Last night, after an evening thunderstorm and surrounded by the calls of elf owls and Mexican whip-poor-wills, I went hunting for scorpions, blacklight in hand. The must of damp oak leaves filled my sinuses, something missing from my life for too long. It was like the smell of redemption, something fresh and new and undeserved.

This was a seek-and-destroy mission. A summer blacklight routine reinvigorated on Saturday evening. Yesterday morning, I killed five. The day before, two. All in the house—on the floors, on the walls. It was a plague. So last night, I moved to the stone walls outside the house with my walking stick to fluoresce and crush.

Yes, seek and destroy. On Saturday evening in the kitchen, the wife stepped barefoot on a bark scorpion.

The UV light ignites the cuticle of their exoskeletons to neon-green, setting the join-legged arachnids to glow in the dark—as it does the half-moon nails of my naked toes. “You don’t want to come out here,” I tell her every time I light up the rock walls of our home.

She has visited the ER three times after severe reactions to bark scorpion venom, once requiring two vials of antivenom—goat serum made at Arizona State University—as her body grew cold and numb and rigid, her eyes whirling like pinwheels. That was fun.

The last time, we jumped from the couch after she swung her leg across my chest, both of us feeling the brilliant pain of molten needles rammed into our tenders as we slapped and brushed and shouted. She got vials of serum, muscle relaxants, and pain killers. I got to hold her hand.

This time, we avoided an ER visit with ice, Benadryl, and a combo of Advil and Tylenol. Which kept the neurotoxin restricted to only one leg. After six days, she is mostly recovered—just some residual numbness in her toes. Meanwhile, I hunt scorpions and keep the ice packs cold and ready.

And watch the birds.

Thanks for joining me in the Big Yard, scorpions and all! More to come as the monsoon thunderstorms change the canyon from brown to green!

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