April 10, 2026

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 5:46pm

Bird Species: northern cardinal, European starling, American robin, Canada goose, mallard, the hybrid celebrity duck, American coot, red-wing blackbird

Things I Thought About:

• It is much too late to be hitting the park, but I just want to be here.
• A woman exiting the park is saying loudly to her husband and her friend, "That one is 4685, it's the last four digits of our old landline." Ma'am. Are you standing outside, declaring your pin numbers? I am not saying I would follow you and your old man husband to parking lot and push you over and grab your purse, but I could.
• I can't remember the last time I was out here for sunset and dusk, but it must have been on a day when I didn't mind about photos, because the sun is setting behind the pond and I cannot see a goddamn thing. My heard but not seen list is going to be a record-breaker.
• Well, there's a starling, but I certainly am not going to take a photo of a starling at Huntley. I have to save starlings for days I'm in our nation's crapital. Which is a very pretty city! I feel like readers of the bird blog suspect my ambivalence about working in town.
• I go to check on the owls first because it is so late and I worry I won't see them in the light later. Rookie mistake. I always walk the same loop here, and I always regret it when I don't, and this evening is no exception.
• The nest is now an extremely man-made nest-basket contraption, and I make an involuntary little bleat of distress when I see it in my binos. A photographer tells me that earlier this week the nest partially collapsed and the owlets fell out and hit the ground. Raptor Rescue came out, and they made it through and are back where they belong, but now there's this rig that only the mother owl can enter, and it looks depressing. The mom is out there somewhere, in nearby tree, but way out in the distance and in deep cover, apparently. The photogs have a bead on her, but I never even saw her.

• I'm annoyed with myself for the detour, and a little upset, and I head back out the way I came to pick up my proper loop. On the way back to the turn, I hear that wind thing I have described before, where you can hear it coming through these old-growth trees before it gets to you. It feels like it takes a long time to catch up to me today, like the wave does in a huge stadium, and I spend the whole time with my eyes closed, feeling my feet and collecting myself from the shock of the owlets. When it passes over, I'm willing to give it a shot and not head right back to the car.
• I have seen two birds. I came to see ducks, and there are no ducks.
• can those two snapping turtles be the bird of the day
• get a room, snapping turtles
• Oh, the coot is out of the water! Show FEET! SHOW FEET! Show your WEIRD CHICKEN FEET!
• This is maddeningly confusing, because they have weird chicken legs, but he is also standing on a tipped over reed bundle with a bunch of weird spindly branches, and the mind (my mind) cannot make sense of it all.

• At least now the blackbirds are out. This time of year, the males are still jockeying for personal space, and at sunset they spread all across the park as they get ready to call it a day. They settle on the tip top of marsh plants and stake out a claim, a few hundred feet apart, and just screech BLAAAAACKBird, then fly a few yards further on and do it again, until they're ready to settle down for the night. Their epaulets flare out when they call, little splashes all over the brown. It's genuinely a great time, watching them.

• Oh. There's a nest right there. Not much cover though.
• Nobody likes a Canada goose except me, I think. She looks like a good mom.

BOTD: this specific Canada goose. She has constructed her floating nest quite close to the boardwalk, and spent many minutes flicking away fuzz and sticks, settling down and getting back up to make an adjustment, and finally tucking in for the night when she got it the way she wanted it. No goslings yet, and it's nice to think they might hatch so close to the boardwalk but out of the way of even accidental human harm.

Canada geese have a nictitating membrane, but I did not know that until tonight! I had her all framed up, she looked very warm and soft in the golden light of the setting sun, and then her eye just went white in the frame, and I said, "what the FUCK," and then it was brown again, and then white again. I'm sure some people would find this unpleasant, but I loved it. I could have watched her clean her nest and blink all evening. I watched this goose for a very long time and when she was settled, with her head tucked in, I left.