August 8, 2026

Where: Eakin Park at Tobin Road

When: 12:00 pm

Bird Species: eastern bluebird, house finch, yellow-billed cuckoo, house sparrow, eastern wood pewee, downy woodpecker, northern cardinal, gray catbird

Things I Thought About:

• Oh, fuck it's hot. The bird of the day is humidity.
• That trip to HomeGoods was a bust. Is there anything worse that making up your mind to spend money and not finding anything you want to buy?
• Why are all the knick-knacks beige? Recession indicator.
• Well, except for the Halloween stuff, which my middle-aged aunt energy is drawn to, but which I never buy. Why would I need a Halloween horror trick mirror when I have a front-facing camera to similar effect?
• Well, it doesn't hit the same way it did yesterday evening in the dark and gray, but that splash of raspberry is lovely in all lights.

• Oh, my goodness, adorable. There are three young bluebirds on three different trees, extremely close and incredibly cute. They also are considerate enough to be hanging out near the picnic shelter, where I can sit in the shade.

• I watched a young house sparrow earlier, who fussed a lot, yelling and mewing, and then flew down to a bush and ate some berries and then zipped away. All these birds around here fledge for only about 12 days. I enjoy the idea that as they get close to being on their own the parents are like "Hey, we'll still do breakfast and dinner, but can you get your own lunch?"
• One of the young bluebirds was fussing a bit, and I was hopeful if I sat long enough I might see an adult come over to help, but the picnic shelter was reserved for a party (90 degrees and 90% humidity be damned, I guess) an they showed up before the adult bluebirds did.

• I bought a fun candy at HomeGoods earlier, as one must, a chocolate caramel candy corn bark, and I guess I did accidentally leave it in the car for these two hours. Disaster.
• Very happy with the birds today, though.

BOTD: Yellow-billed cuckoo.

I will say up front, the bluebirds were tons of fun, and I got a million great, close photos of them, and I really did debate making them the BOTD, but as I have said before, the bird photo of the day isn't the same thing. The bird of the day is the yellow-billed cuckoo, because he was just a wonderful surprise.

I was down by the pond, and saw a bird flying around near the very top of the trees on the other side. That's it, that was the whole story. But it was on kind of the far side of the tree, in cover, and flying back and forth, and I just didn't know what it was. It was bigger than a songbird, and it was not a bird I have never seen at Eakin before, of that I was sure. It wasn't until I downloaded the photos that it registered that this was very obviously a yellow-billed cuckoo.

Cuckoo simply never crossed my mind. I've only seen one at Huntley, and only two in my life (when I say "two" I don't mean two occasions, I mean the one that is hanging around out there this summer, and the one that was out there in 2023 when I first listed the species.) This would be the third. I can't imagine he's a resident of this park, like the bluebirds are, but I know now to keep an eye out for him when I'm here.

The very poor photos I've gotten at Huntley this month never show the big white circles on his tail, or much detail about that downward curving bill. I'm happy to be able to show him to you, not a great photo, but by far the best one I've taken of a cuckoo.

A fun fact about a yellow-billed cuckoo is that they like to eat things other birds don't, specifically hairy and fuzzy things like those big cocoons tent caterpillars make. A fun bird.