February 23, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 12:30-1:30pm, and 5:00pm

Bird Species: house sparrow, American robin, European starling, northern mockingbird, mourning dove, house finch, white-throated sparrow, downy woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• See, now this is snow I can live with. It was pretty when I woke up, and now it’s mostly gone.
• When I was a very little kid I had a picture book about four elephants called Romper, Tromper, Stomper, and Boo. Three of the elephants made all kinds of noise when they walked around, but one of them was completely silent even though he was also big. I have no idea at all why this came floating up in my brain, but I suspect it has something to do with snow boots. 
• There was also a children’s book I loved called Mary Louise’s Heyday, about a lemur that was supposed to be having a big day off but had to babysit 5 baby possums instead. I think this one stays in my mind because at the end she sits in a hammock and eats bananas.
• I would like to sit in a hammock and eat bananas. I would like it to be 90 degrees.
• I can hear almost every bird we ever get around here, but what I am seeing is robins. This is a huge flock. Everywhere I look I see movement, to-ing and fro-ing, picking a berry and then taking off again, and I keep thinking these can’t all be robins, but they all are. It really is like a clown car; you keep thinking there won’t be any more but here come a dozen more. 

• Many times in life I have been told that it’s better to be too hot than too cold, when you’re cold you can put on more clothes but when you’re hot you can only do so much. This is so fucking stupid I can’t even argue it. Oh nooooo, what If I had to put on my sleaziest nightgown and drink iced tea with a box fan pointed right at me. Oh noooo, it’s too hot to dooooo anything, as if just sitting around dozing and not doing stuff isn’t one of my core strengths.
• When it is cold your knees hurt and your shoulders hurt and your tits hurt and your hair is awful always from hats, and layering clothing correctly is impossible, and everything you wash has to lay flat to dry, and you shock yourself on doorknobs, and your nose runs all the time, and your fingernails break, and you shave your legs like three times in three months because why bother, and when you do shave them they itch so bad, and snow boots keep your feet warm but they are too heavy. And you have to shovel snow.
• I can’t wait until it’s hot and the sun is up at 8:30pm. I want to dance outside to a band with fiddles and a goddamn banjo in it, pounding a bottled beer like it’s water while sweat pours off me. I want to have a heyday.

BOTD: downy woodpecker. I had my nice regular lunchtime walk, pleasantly surprised by how the snow did not linger, but the only good photos were the robins, which have been featured quite recently. I decided to take another run after work and see if I couldn't find someone more interesting, and this little girlie was really working away at tree across the street.

I like these woodpeckers because they're quite small but they work really hard. This one is a female. Males have red at the nape, but I rather like the plain black and white. One photo, she was kind of curled over the branch with her tail hanging below and she kind of looked like an otter on a log? It was an uncommonly cute pose for a bird.