February 4, 2026

Where: the brushy hedgerow

When: 9:26 am

Bird Species: northern mockingbird, northern cardinal, house sparrow, mourning dove, American robin, sharp-shinned hawk, blue jay

Things I Thought About:

• Work, and my job, and the job market, and how a project I’m trying to wrap up is stretching like taffy in a million directions right at the end. Also, the world is falling apart, and no one talks about it, so I’m already like three and a half hours behind from extended walks outside this week. 
• Sara Kate, you simply cannot fuck around and dawdle on the bird walk today just because it’s sunny and your head is full; go to the OFFICE. This is the only chance you’ll have today to get a photo, just walk up to the end of the road and back to the car, half an hour tops.  
• Well, you can also chase that cardinal. This is the same sassy cardinal from Monday, with all the pinky undertones. He is being very cooperative while I stand in front of his tree whispering, “Where is your WIFE??” like the dimwit fiancée who is becoming suspicious in a Lifetime movie.

• In the amateur bird groups on Facebook, people are always labeling birds “leucistic” when they are even a little bit washed out, when to me, an uneducated birder, it seems obvious that there can be a tremendous variation in coloration. I don’t doubt it would feel amazing to see a bird that is genuinely leucistic, like an actual white cardinal, but people need to slow down with slapping that label on what is merely a very pale bird. Elle Fanning does not have albinism. 
• I think this cardinal is very young adult, which would explain both the patchy pink and why he does not appear to have a wife. No rush to settle down, kid, you have years ahead of you (maybe three of them.)
• whaaaat
• is happening
• under there
• Okay.
• I said just yesterday I hadn’t seen that Cooper’s hawk around.
• And this is not that Cooper’s hawk, I think this is a sharp-shinned hawk. This hawk is so small that when I first glimpsed him under there, with the chest markings, for a split second I thought he was some Jabba-massive song sparrow. This hawk is smaller than a rabbit and, oh. He’s really chowing down on something.
• Not NOW, blue jay!

• Can I kneel on this ice and snow and not hurt my knees and be able to get up again? Probably not, and the brush will still be in the way if I do, so I think this is about as good as it gets for me to see what he’s eating.
• I do think that is a sharpie, and I think he’s eating a white-throated sparrow.
• Under. My. Brushy. Hedgerow. Where the mourning doves were just yesterday.
• Sara Kate, you cannot use, for the featured photo, a shot of a raptor with a mouthful of your favorite kind of sparrow. Are you really going to make people look at several photos of bird-on-bird violence? (Note: Yes. Yes, I am. I did warn you.)

• Ah, wow. This is amazing. I deserve this.
• Um, that sparrow was racist.

BOTD: A sharp-shinned hawk. They are kind of a tough one to identify on the fly (pun intended), but I had a good, long look at him and he checked all three boxes vis-à-vis the Cooper's, the only other contender. Sharpies are jay-sized and Cooper's are crow-sized, Cooper's heads are blockier where a sharpie is more rounded, and sharpies are taller with those long, spindly legs. Also, not for nothing, sharpies are small bird specialists when it comes to diet.

I don’t know what else to tell you, man. This was badass. I took 92 photos.

I was out of office for 107 minutes.