So, hopefully, we stay smart enough to continue the measures that seem to be working to reduce the impact of the pandemic. But staying home and limiting our social interactions is not easy. Especially after a few weeks -- and with the weather turning nice. Hopefully, some ideas that follow will help beat the boredom while maintaining our social distancing and get something useful done for Earth Day 2020 at the same time. Some of these ideas may work best for energetic families while others are better suited for someone looking for a way to relax and be more observant of their surroundings.  

Spring and summer are not usually the best times to attract birds to your backyard with a feeder, unless of course, you are talking about hummingbirds. Many birds will still use a feeder -- or a platform filled with seeds -- but you have to keep it clean since bacteria can grow much quicker in warm and wet weather. Setting up bird feeders in visible areas in your yard can provide hours of entertainment, especially if you have a variety of birds and an occasional squirrel, cottontail rabbit or chipmunk.

It’s easy to convince birds to use your feeder even when you are sitting close. The trick is to get comfortable in a spot so you don’t have to move very much. The longer you can stay still, the more wildlife you will see. It can take more than 15 minutes for critters to feel comfortable even in your backyard. Sitting inside a tent or hunting blind with big windows can allow you to move around and be a little more comfortable without spooking wildlife. But you will be amazed at what you can see just by sitting motionless out in the open. If you have any clothes with bright flower looking colors, be ready to be investigated by an avian acrobat, the hummingbird, thinking you may have a shot or two of nectar. Since birds have good color vision, wearing drab or camo clothes may allow them to get accustomed to your presence quicker.

You may want to set up the feeder just outside of a window to conveniently watch from a comfortable chair indoors. A pair of decent binoculars will bring out details of birds and other critters you never saw before. Adaptors are made that allow binoculars to be mounted on a table-top tripod, allowing for a convenient, comfortable zoomed view of the feeder from a sitting position. If you have a technically talented teenager available -- or a suitable substitute -- you can buy an adaptor for your phone that aligns the phone’s camera with the lens of your binoculars or spotting scope to project the view onto the phone’s screen or large video monitor screen. Magnifying the view of your feeder will make it easier to see details on birds and take photos for later study. 

Birding does not have to be limited to your backyard, of course, if you can safely get yourself to a spot with natural concentrations of birds, like a streamside. Small groups can arrive separately and maintain a safe distance from each other to adhere to the recommended social distancing measures. Obviously, binoculars and field guides should not be shared with people you are not already living with. 

Sometimes, it is easier to start with a bird list of possible species for this area. There are useful bird lists for the Eastern Arizona Wildlife Areas and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests available at the Pinetop Arizona Game and Fish Department office. Other lists can be made with the smartphone apps, based on your area, elevation and habitat.

Many birds have not migrated into the area from the south yet this spring so this is a great time to see new birds almost every day. Some folks keep track of the date they see specific birds and compare it to previous years. A good ‘ole bound field guide to the birds or one of the new phone apps will make identification a snap. Make sure the bird you think you’ve identified actually lives in this area by inspecting the range map. If you’re not too worried about details, you can always make up your own names for the birds based on their appearance or songs. Taking a photo of an unknown bird can give you time to check out all their field marks or get additional help.

An app called iNaturalist is free and has the ability to identify critters just from photos. iNaturalist is similar to the bird-focused app called eBird which can also alert you to rare or unusual sightings of animals in near real time. Maybe the biggest advantage to these apps is their ability to play the songs and calls of the birds. Similar looking birds can have distinctly different vocalizations but, if you play the call from the app, the bird will sometimes answer, making it easy to compare calls.

Or you might want to try to pick out the birds who are “paired up” and getting ready to raise a family. The male will probably be more colorful than the more drab female but they will feed and perch together as well as sometimes cooperating to build a nest. It can take multiple observations of the birds coming and going from the feeder to see where the nest possibly could be. You may have to move your observation point to a better vantage point if you lose sight of their flight path back to a nest. The nest could be a long way from a feeder but usually they’re not that far. 

Disturbing the nest during breeding and rearing season is a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act but you should be able to see the nest without disturbing it. If you can safely observe the nest throughout the summer, you’ll want to try and document how many young chicks fledge, surviving long enough to learn how to fly on their own. 

If you have the appropriate habitat in your yard, you might want to consider putting up nest boxes. Kestrel and bluebirds are common enough in our area that they would likely colonize your box since nesting cavities for these birds are in short supply. Plans can be found on the internet or you can purchase nest boxes premade. Pay attention to the maintenance and monitoring procedures if you want to increase the chances of your box being colonized.

Not just interested in birds? How about conducting a backyard bioblitz? What’s that all about? It’s a great activity to gain an appreciation of the diversity of life above, beside and below us. An official bioblitz is an inventory or survey of how many different kinds of wildlife are in a specific area during a relatively short time period. Anybody can do their own informal bioblitz -- making up their own rules -- or not having any real rules at all. Other than making accurate identifications reported for known locations, of course.

Sometimes it’s easier to find signs made by wildlife than getting a visual on the animal itself. So be thorough and look for burrows, nests, digging and scratching marks, tracks, bones, feathers, insect galls, cocoons, spider webs, nibbled leaves and branches, droppings or scats, feeding holes in dead trees and logs, runways and trails.

Most wild animals prefer to hide or find a place safe from humans, cats and dogs. So, to find them, you have to look on the ground, on tree trunks, in tree branches, under leaf litter, rocks and logs, on plant stems and leaves and even underwater! Many animals are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk.

You can start your own project on the iNaturalist app or join other projects in your area, still maintaining your social distance since these projects all happen outside.

Other activities that can safely happen outside obviously include fishing a local lake for some of those lunker winter carry-overs or some of the new fish stocked regularly. It’s easy to find enough space along a shoreline and even a canoe can provide six feet of separation. And while you are strolling the shoreline, please carefully collect any discarded fishing line so that the local eagles and osprey don’t accidentally pick it up and place it in their nests, potentially ensnaring both chicks and adults.  

For those who really want to get off the beaten path, you can always start geo-caching or locating small objects placed outside by other geo-cachers, using a global positioning system or GPS. Geo-caching can become competitive, even within a family, as you get to register all of the geocaches you find and brag about the most remote ones.

 

For those who want to connect with Mother Earth more literally, try reading the language of animal tracks in the mud and soft dirt created by our recent rains. The White Mountains are home to an amazing diversity of animals, many of which are nocturnal. But you don’t need fancy night vision scopes if you can read track signs. You can work on distinguishing bulls from cows, bucks from does and bobcats from coyotes during our moist spring which makes for better tracking. 

Many White Mountain residents like to multi-task and have picked up the new fitness craze called the Ponderosa Shuffle. You know, that’s when the Ponderosa needles pile up so thick and get compacted into a mat, it’s easier to dig your toe down under the needle mat and give a gradual but convincing push forward to pile needles up like sticky snow, compared to wrestling them with a typical rake. After a few minutes of lower extremity workouts moving the bulk of the needles, you can switch to a lighter upper body workout cleaning up the leftover needles from your leg pushes.  

At least we’re fortunate to be surrounded by lots of open space to responsibly recreate. We need to plan for continued social distancing -- at least for the near future -- as projections call for Arizona’s virus cases to peak right around Earth Day 2020. At 50 years old and borderline vulnerable, Earth Day could use all of our help this year!