April 21, 2026

Where: Ranger Road Park

When: 5:35 pm

Bird Species: eastern bluebird, white-throated sparrow, American robin, northern cardinal, red-bellied woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• I started chewing this gum before I got on the metro and it is thoroughly cashed now, but I don't have the wrapper with me, and I absolutely hate putting gum in the trash can without wrapping it up. Every time I find a gum I love they discontinue it, I assume on purpose, because they don't want the flavor to last, they want you to chew more gum.
• Stride is so hard to find these days. That is a great gum.
• Why are parks fitness circuits? What happened in like 2008 or so where you go to walk alongside a pretty stream and suddenly there's a chin-up station? Refuse. Reject. Gym is gym and park is park. I will allow you to run in one, but I draw the line at inclined sit-ups in one.
• This one is okay, in the sense that I've been here four times now and just tonight noticed it's a fitness course. I've certainly never seen anybody using it.
• Only I could look at a wooden set of vault bars and assume it was public art.
• There are so many cardinals in this park it's worthy of interest. I've seen two or three males in pursuit of a female, but I think I've seen eight tonight. One male just landed on another, to drive him further down the trail. That's the second time in a few days that I've seen the Bonk as a territorial behavior.
• Cardinals sometimes make little piping burble noises, and I'm hearing so much of that right now, loud and from every direction. I guess cardinals are going to be the BOTD, because I'm not seeing anybody else. Cardinals can always be the BOTD, but it's a real weeknight dinner sort of bird. You can always just grab a cardinal the same way you can always just open a can of soup.

• Someone is wearing cocoa butter lotion, and it smells really good, like cookies. I myself smell very strongly of Deep Woods Off. Less edible, but I remain happy with my choices.
• Looking at my notes, I think I'm doing a grounding exercise by accident. Taste, hear, smell. And see, of course, but what I am not seeing are the two eastern bluebirds that vanished the minute I locked my car.
• You know what I miss? Brach's Royals. An old lady candy, but I loved those. I haven't seen them in a decade at least.

BOTD: red-bellied woodpecker. I had followed a cardinal down to the stream edge to get that nice shot above, ready to use it despite feeling a little uninspired by the cardinals as a group tonight, and when I turned around this woodpecker was right there, planning his attack on that peeling tree trunk.

Whatever kind of tree that is, with the huge flaking scales of bark, was an evening's work for this fellow. He wasn't really drumming or pecking, he was using his bill to just pry up the bark, like a kid flipping over a log to look for roly-polies. I regret to say, as pieces fell away in big dusty chunks, that one word that crossed my mind watching it was "scabs."

I believe that is a sycamore tree. Against my will, I am learning the name of some trees.