January 22, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 7:16am-8:09am

Bird Species: mourning dove, northern cardinal, European starling, northern mockingbird, American robin, American crow, Cooper's hawk, house sparrow, house finch, white breasted-nuthatch, red-bellied woodpecker, blue jay

Things I Thought About:

• It is pretty remarkable that they let Thomas Harris name that book The Silence of the Lambs. It’s pretty artsy for a late 80s crime novel. Even more surprising is that the movie didn’t change it.
• Why on earth am I thinking of The Silence of the Lambs? It’s not because of the starlings, who are being difficult about photos this morning. I think it floated up because that bush full of house sparrows is chirping so noisily. It is easy to imagine a small child being very frightened, hearing this bush, with all the tiny, hopping things rustling and shrieking from inside of it.
• Clarice Starling is a banger character name. 
• So is Atticus Finch, for that matter. 
• I…I can see why someone would kill a mockingbird, though. They are little shits.
• There is a blue jay just screaming over there. When I first stepped out this morning a wren was singing across the road, and I thought how nice it must be for the houses over there to wake up to that, but not so much to this maniac. 
• I saw The Silence of the Lambs in the theater when it came out and got all the way to Scott Glenn knocking on the wrong door before I realized I had read it. I believe it is an extremely faithful adaptation of the book, too, so it isn’t a case where the movie script is so different it might as well be a different piece, like Jaws. I think the movie is just that good and unique and transportive. 
• Oh, if I post this, um, “spoilers,” I guess. Spoilers for 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Scott Glenn is at the wrong house.
• I haven’t seen any woodpeckers today. That’s uncommon. Usually there are red-bellied ones on this block.
• Oh, never mind, there’s one now.

• I have been chasing this blue jay for three blocks. Every time I get him dialed in, he flies off. If I catch him from the back, I can see those gorgeous colors, and then off he goes, or he’s so high up that from the front I can’t quite catch the dark blue cap and chin markings. While I struggle with auto-focus in this early daylight, he flies to the tallest treetop, or into a bush three houses down.

• This is not at all like chasing a toddler, or a dog that has gotten off leash. I feel no frustration at all, and he is not teasing me. I think, oh, got him!; nope, I do not got him; he has a berry!; come down here, idiot at intervals, and none of it has anything to do with me. I’ll just keep walking my route, and keeping an eye out, and eventually I’ll get a good picture or two, or else I won’t. 
• I have been coming outside with the camera every day. There is always another bird.

BOTD: Blue jay. I think the reason he was hiding from me was to protect his snack, which, relatable. Extremely handsome, and always a challenging capture. I would not date this bird.

Last June I posted a photo of a blue jay on Bluesky and it got 10K likes. Genuinely terrifying. Most of the replies and quote posts were about an animated blue jay named Mordecai. I don't know him, but he seems to have a lot of GIFs.