February 15, 2026
Where: Eakin Community Park (Municipal Garden)
When: 11:30 am
Bird Species: house sparrow, white-throated sparrow, downy woodpecker, yellow-rumped warbler. Heard but not seen: blue jay, eastern bluebird, dark-eyed junco, northern cardinal, American robin, red-bellied woodpecker.
I started watching How to Get to Heaven from Belfast last night, and to the surprise of no one the music is insanely good. What it mostly is doing is making want to rewatch Derry Girls. This showrunner has a compassion and affection for mean and selfish little blondes that is second to no one. A pretty good time so far.
So How Was Today's Bird Walk?
Not great. This is a park where I usually hop on the cross county trail for a long walk before grocery shopping on Sundays, but it looked still pretty soggy and treacherous with snow and ice, so I just put on my heavy snow boots, which have seen more action in the past three weeks than I have in the past five years, and hiked up the hill to the municipal garden. It was a dark and glum day and starting to sprinkle, and I heard many more birds than I saw. I was amazed that I never saw the cardinal; they are not shy birds.
I did chat with two nice older gentleman coming back up from the CCT, who told me I made the right choice. Apparently, the snow pack is still very present and slippery, and the small pond at the turn is still completely frozen over, of course. All three of us took out our phones and showed our photos of a great blue heron in that pond. Mine was from June 2024, but theirs was just a few months ago, which was cheering given how low the water has dropped. And when I say a small pond, I mean, small. I saw a belted kingfisher there once and could not believe it. Anyone would take a photo if they saw a heron in it, it would be genuinely remarkable.
Bird of the Day:
On the way back down the hill, I saw that little yellow-rumped warbler, obligingly close to eye level on the slope. There was no sun and plenty of trees, so there's quite a bit more editing than usual in play here. Still very dark. They're a pretty little bird, though, and I've been seeing rather a lot of them lately, just chirping, not warbling yet.
