January 24, 2026

Where: Wakefield Park

When: 11:40am-12:20pm

Bird Species: northern mockingbird, white-throated sparrow, tufted titmouse, Carolina chickadee, northern cardinal, red-bellied woodpecker, song sparrow, American crow, Carolina wren, downy woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• The upcoming storm, and our unhoused neighbors. I hope everybody took the opportunities they were offered this week.
• This winter storm did not have a name when I went to bed and then I woke up this morning to “Winter Storm Fern” everywhere. I continue to feel ill-equipped for this. I still have to remind myself that snow here is not like snow in Georgia. When I moved here, I did not know what the pre-treatment on the roads was. I had never seen more than one snowplow at the same time. I had never seen a state be prepared for a winter storm before.
• I myself am not prepared for Winter Storm Fern. I mean, I have groceries and batteries and all my things are charged and I know where the flashlights are and I own hats and gloves and snow pants and all that. I simply Do Not Want. I am not mentally prepared.
• The name Fern should be understood in one context alone, and that is “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” 
• Well, it looks like those red-bellies were not building a nest after all. Nothing that looks nest-like is taking shape. There's still one hanging around though.
• The snow totals continue to revise downward in my area, now saying 6"-10," but I want a total bust. I want <5”. Winter Storm Godot is what I want.
• I see a male cardinal everywhere I look today. One lovely little female ground foraging, and several males chasing each other, or chasing each other off, really. Everyone enjoys joking about the gay cardinals on Christmas merchandise, but it’s actually very common to see them together like that in December and in the cold and snow. They are negotiating in cardinal for the right to stuff a lady cardinal with seeds, one at a time.

• Ever since I read this week that birds don’t get frostbite standing in snow because they have barely any fluid in their feet, I am obsessed with how much fluid I have in my feet. Blood, and joint juice, and lymph probably? Cytoplasm?? Which part freezes and makes your toes come off in the boot, I wonder?
• I do have a tendency to obsess about my body parts like this. Years ago, when I was having some trouble with low back pain, an extremely unlicensed hippy dip Reiki enthusiast gave me this hot tip: imagine that your pelvis is a bucket of water, filled to the top. You should walk in a way that you disturb the surface of the water as little as possible. Needless to say, this homely little metaphor ruined my fucking life for a month. I could not put one foot in front of the other. I was a marionette, and sloshing water all over the floors.
• Synovial fluid. I remembered the actual term for “joint juice.” It’s what makes your knuckles crack. I think? That might actually be one of the things you hear or read one time when you’re 10 and you just accept it and never examine it ever again. “Your knuckles crack because you’re popping bubbles in the synovial fluid.” This sounds very unmedical, and very made-up, when you say it like that.
• I'm going home. It is 18 degrees and I do not think I would like it if ice crystals formed in my joints.

BOTD: Song sparrow. I like white-throated sparrows best, but the song sparrows are maybe the most beautiful to photograph. That buffy color shows up nicely against almost every background. The streaks on the breast are very defined and neat as a pin, and end in that perfectly centered splotch. Their shade of brown tends reddish, and the pattern sometimes looks almost maroon to me, especially perched up in some of the reddish brush vines that grow around here (I do not know the names of plants and trees.) Song sparrow's song is quite lovely, but they don't sing that much this time of year.