January 11, 2026
Where: Huntley Meadows Park
When: 8:05am-10:47am
Bird Species: mourning dove, northern cardinal, brown creeper, pileated woodpecker, northern flicker (ha-ha!), song sparrow, house finch, red-headed woodpecker, eastern bluebird, red-bellied woodpecker, sora (lifer), swamp sparrow, white-throated sparrow, Canada goose, ruby-crowned kinglet, American goldfinch, northern pintail, northern shoveler, hooded merganser, bald eagle, great blue heron, mallard, American crow, dark-eyed junco, downy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, red-shouldered hawk
Things I Thought About:
- Birds. Trees. The rain yesterday and how the ground will be saturated. For a mercy, I struggle to remember a single thing I thought about that wasn’t birds or turtles or frogs or muskrats, and the changing of the seasons, and the rise and fall of water in a marsh, and the wind.
- This park is my favorite place in the world, maybe. Out of my whole life list, I bet I listed 50 of them here. (Note: 66, actually.) The whole place is full of “that’s where I saw the prothonotary warbler” landmarks. In the spring, I try to get out here on those early first warm days for Turtle Log Season. One time I tried to count and quit at 183.
- Brown creeper! They are such little sweeties, and they take such terrible pictures. I’m sure these photos will be awful when I download them. (Note: yep.)
- Ohhhh, I’ve never seen a red-headed woodpecker this close to the path befo-oh godDAMMIT come back here!
- I have been here almost an hour, and I haven’t even made it to the boardwalk yet. Any one of these birds could be the BOTD. I want to post so many birds.
- The sora. I got him, clear as day in the binos, scuttling from marsh shrub to marsh shrub. I can feel the stupidest smile on my face. He’s smaller than I thought he would be! What a beak. No photo, there was no chance really, he’s so skittish and he was trying to hide. Plus, there are 4 other people looking in the same marshy grass and they all have two-foot lenses; let them get the shot.
- There are always dozens of serious wildlife photographers here, and I’ve heard that they can be very competitive and hoard information from each other, but in my experience, all I have to do is say very softly “I’ve never seen one” and they immediately make room and tell me where to look. Today we all saw it at kind of the same time, and I didn’t even try to get my camera up.
- Okay, well, I’m going to post this hoodie pic if it comes out at all, even if it isn’t the BOTD. I always feel so lucky when I catch a bird with its mouth full.
- Those married pileated woodpeckers are having a romp. Oh, there’s a flicker with them! I SEE YOU, BITCH.
- Unbelievable corny thoughts out here on a Sunday morning. This leaf-choked dry gully has had mallards splashing around in it before, and in another few weeks I’m not going to be able to see the nest where the red-shouldered hawks fledged last spring from this angle. It has been several years now that I have come out here at least monthly, almost weekly since I started with birds. I walk the whole loop every time, in the same direction every time, and I don’t rush. I can stand anywhere on this trail and know what I should be looking for, and where we are in the cycle of the seasons, and what birds are about to leave for a year and which ones will soon be back. With these tall old trees, you can hear the wind in the treetops in a wave a second before it reaches you, and you can turn your body into or away from it, depending on what you need.
- Sometimes when I’m out here I think about the words to hymns I know.
BOTD: Red-headed woodpecker. This was a tough choice today. I saw my favorite duck, three beautifully obliging varieties of sparrow, and once again I got two pileated in the same shot. But the red-headed woodpecker usually stays far away from me, and they aren't around my house at all. I actually managed to get the shot even though it flew off the moment I noticed it. Such a nice bird.
Leave it to me to fall in love with a hobby that actively flees from me when I try to do it.
