January 18, 2026

Where: Hidden Oaks Nature Center

When: 12:00pm

Bird Species: tufted titmouse, Carolina wren, Carolina chickadee, house finch, dark-eyed junco, mourning dove, downy woodpecker, brown creeper, red-bellied woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, American crow, turkey vulture (flyover), northern flicker, pileated woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• I cannot believe the first thing I hear when I get out of my car is my enemy, a northern flicker.
• Oh, the nature center is open! Usually I'm here earlier in the day. I need to go in and pay for Waldo for 2026. Waldo is the common snapping turtle I sponsor. It costs $40 a year to be a turtle sponsor. Best investment I ever made. When I picked him, they told me no one ever wants to sponsor him because he's mean, not cute, and anti-social, which, relatable. I’ve seen him twice in three years; he is adept at hiding in a habitat slightly smaller than my bathroom.
• I have a very cute video of the niece trying to catch a white-tailed deer here, in 2018, so she would have been 5. I cannot begin to express how cute this video is, she is tippy toeing, sneaking around, and then running to hide behind a tree and looking back at me, finger to lips, telling me to “shhh” as the deer continues to remain a comfortable 25 yards ahead at all times. I wish I could show you, but the kid will be thirteen next month, and I am not even allowed to post our selfies to the Auntie Group Chat without giving her a chance to edit or veto.
• I don’t love taking photos on birdfeeders, it feels like cheating, but I did mention the other day how attractive the finches are and I want people to see what a good photo of one looks like.

• Oh, my god, that flicker is so close, and he is invisible. That bird is an absolute cock.
• I have been reading too many smutty little regency novels if my brain defaulted to “cock” as an insult. 
• “Cunt,” my least favorite word, turns out to be period-accurate, too. I of course think it is awful as an epithet, and I abominate “serve cunt” or “cunty little dress” as a compliment, too. The only acceptable usage is well-brought up young ladies secretly referring to the vile Lord Huntington as “Lord Cuntington” behind their fans at a ball.
• Do not get me started on "kitty."
• My toe is coming out of these sneakers, again. Brooks running shoes have the best support and the widest toe-box of all the sneakers I try, but I am always wearing through the top with my big toe, like a little troll person. How does this happen. My socks are fine.
• That bird is either a red-bellied woodpecker or a northern fucking flicker, and it is too gloomy and it is too high up to tell. I am going to go home, download and dial up the exposure on these photos, and if you turn out to be a flicker I am going to smash my house apart like I’m Keith Moon. (Note: it is TWO flickers. I am going to become The Joker, but for birds.)

• Truthfully, it does not hurt me to be forbidden to share Niece’s photo except by her now exceedingly rare permission. She is getting too pretty for it. I worry about her becoming a teenager constantly. Being one was so hard and confusing when I was doing it, and back then there was no internet, and there was a tacit understanding that young men had to at least pretend they didn’t resent and despise and want to hurt girls. I don't like how things are going to be worse for her than they were for me. I don't like how she will have fewer rights as a young woman than I did, not more. I don't like the way these things are trending.
• Releasing Send Help in January feels like a studio dumping it, but I think it’s going to do very well. A Sam Raimi, Misery meets Cast Away, island horror thriller with Rachel McAdams? How do you not bet on that? I will see it opening weekend and I’ll take the kid. We have sleepover that weekend. We're going to do false eyelashes.

BOTD: the Carolina wren. This bird has a loud and beautiful song, and it sings a lot. One day in the fall two years ago I said to myself, “What bird is that? I hear it every day” and I downloaded Merlin. They go up high to sing, and the trees had lost their leaves, so within a few days I could hear the song, and then find the bird singing it, every time. Within a week, I knew the white-throated sparrows and the cardinals by their song, too. Now the only local bird sounds that stump me are the titmouse sometimes, just because they make so many sounds. That wren's song changed my life.

The Carolina wren is widely regarded as one of our cutest birds. He is also one of our dumbest birds. This bird will build a nest four inches from an Olympic running track, or in your mailbox, or under the only bench in the park. It is one thing to be fearless when you are a tough little guy, but these birds are just clueless. Singing away while their entire family gets removed by housekeeping because they built their house in the dispenser drawer of a hotel vending machine.

They always look to me like a round, old man with his hands folded behind his back. The rare pair where the male and female look alike. The two in the photo up top are married.