As a little kid, if asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d respond, “I’m going to get a PhD in Ornithology.” Weird? Cute? Definitely nerdy. I birdwatched with my dad, loving it, and the birds. Though I did not reach the lofty goal I set for myself, I still love birds. However, on the scale of serious birders (let’s say 1-10), I’m down around a 3 or 4—I have no life list, warblers generally baffle me, and I can only recognize about five birds by their songs. Still, almost every day I hike, I bring my not-birder-serious, but very-lightweight binoculars with me, and take delight in the birds I see and hear.

Particular favorites are Mountain bluebirds who winter in the junipers of the Sandia Mountain foothills. If you have never seen a Mountain bluebird, they are, in a word, stunning. Each fall, I rejoice in their return. And in late winter/early spring, I prepare myself for their departure, savoring each day I spot them, knowing they will fly north soon. I saw them into March this year, later than they usually depart, and was thrilled for every extra day I had with them. For me, they really are the Bluebirds of Happiness. But I love the whole rainbow of birds I get to see throughout the year.

While watching a Ladder-backed woodpecker at our feeder, I thought about that rainbow (remember ROY G. BIV from grade school—the mnemonic device for the colors of the rainbow). Though I grew up back east seeing bold red Cardinals, the desert is not their habitat (their paler crested cousins, the Pyrrhuloxia are here though), still I see many birds with flashes of red, like the Ladder-backs with their scarlet caps and red-shafted Northern Flickers, one of whom posed nicely for me on our parapet. For orange, bright Bullock’s orioles and more muted Black-headed grosbeaks visit us in spring. And yellow, well, our springtime visitors, the Western tanagers, are certainly flashy in that department, and the males in mating plumage are wearing the whole ROY of ROY G. BIV. Lesser goldfinches are year-round yellow friends. Green is tougher, as only rarely do Green-tailed towhees stop at our feeder, with their rusty red raised caps and olive-greenish tails. For blue, you can’t beat the bright Mountain bluebirds, and I count our year-round resident Western bluebirds (who are different, but no less spectacular than their Mountain cousins) as our indigo birds. I can’t think of any violet winged visitors in the desert (oh wait, what about the iridescent purple flashes of Black-chinned hummingbirds!), but the Purple martins who I see all summer while sailing the Salish Sea, complete my rainbow of birds. And in addition to their visual beauty, oh, how I love their songs…