"Tails" of a New Birder's Journey

It’s been quiet here at my bird blog, and it’s not because I’ve been birding. Michelle and I bought a second home in Arizona!

Instead of trying to write the story of how this came about for my blog, it’s easiest to put my Facebook post. Michelle and I have both been feeling that we’re ready for a change in where we live. My month-long stints to stay in places with lots of birds and in a nature setting have met that need, but coming home, what I missed the most was waking up every morning to the sound of birds, sitting outside with my morning coffee, watching birds from my window, and falling asleep to the sounds of nature.

Ultimately, I realized that what I really want is to live in a house with a yard so that I can see birds every day. So we’ve been trying to figure out how to make that happen. We discussed becoming digital nomads again, renting places for 6 months at a time. We’ve discussed moving to Oregon, Washington, and the Central Coast of CA, and have looked online at houses for sale in suburban areas on small pieces of land. But we realized we’d have to sell our condo to be able to afford such a place.

Although we are fine with selling our condo, the big issue with all these scenarios is that while we’d both be fine living in OR or WA in the spring, summer, and fall, we couldn’t agree on where we both want to live in the winter. Michelle has become so acclimatized to SoCal that she can’t imagine living anywhere else in the winter.

So, we considered the option of buying a second home in Arizona. We looked at places a year ago, and I’ve been looking at listings daily over the last year. We considered multiple options. One idea was to buy an inexpensive manufactured home on land that I could escape to when I needed a “nature fix.” We also considered purchasing land and putting a new manufactured home or an RV on it. I was also willing to compromise and suggested buying a place in Tucson so that Michelle would still have access to the big city stuff that she craves, but the desert is too cold for her in the winter.

The house we ended up purchasing was one of a dozen different places we looked at. I kinda fell in love with the house, and although I’m not the type of person who thinks there is “one perfect house,” this one really did tick all the boxes. So, it wasn’t an impulsive decision, but it has been years in the making. And although we only looked at a dozen places in person, I’ve looked at hundreds online. I think we made a solid decision, and this is a house I can see myself growing old in!

I won’t post any pictures of the actual house because of privacy issues. But, there will be plenty of pictures of yard birds. Stay tuned!