January 29, 2026
Where: my complex and the one next door, which finally cleared their sidewalks yesterday
When: 9:16 am
Bird Species: house sparrow, white-throated sparrow, dark-eyed junco, red-bellied woodpecker, blue jay, yellow-bellied sapsucker, northern mockingbird, northern cardinal
Things I Thought About:
- The LinkedIn Job Alerts “You might be a fit for…” email this morning. Joke’s on you, I have already applied for and not been moved forward in the process for that one. I am getting rejected faster than the speed of the algorithm. Impressive, in a way.
- I do have a second interview tomorrow, but looking for your next opportunity is daunting when you lack ambition. I simply want to make more money and be in a PPO again. I don’t look to my job for much of anything else.
- I am bored with just walking around my place, but I am still wary of the snow and ice on neighborhood sidewalks and local park trails. The wildlife photographers at my swamp, who will be at the observation tower at 7:00am the day the bombs fall, looking for river otters, are reliably reporting conditions out there on the boardwalk and waters, and to that my knees and I continue to say, “No thanks.” The next time the high temperature will be above 30 is Monday, and I will, like the groundhog, emerge into sunshine. Meanwhile, all these boring sparrows.
- Well, there’s another blue jay. He’s doing that thing, where he holds a nut steady against the limb with his feet and cracks it open with his beak. A sparrow under the same tree seems to just be popping them open with his mouth? (nods sagely) I bet that’s adaptation.
- What if someone with a bird blog knew anything about how birds eat? Seems show-offy to me.
- Should I watch North by Northwest tonight? When we won trivia Tuesday that’s the movie we picked for winner’s choice. I’ve seen it dozens of times, and usually when the winner’s choice question is a movie you can get it by reading the Wikipedia entry, but it never hurts to watch North by Northwest again.
- One time we picked Macbeth and people got a little mad. It’s his shortest play! And, again, “Banquo” is not a tough get if you look into Macbeth, like, at all.
- One time a team picked Pokemon, Red and Blue. I read the Wikipedia, and the answer to the question was definitely in there, but that entry is like 8000 words long. We also missed when the winner’s choice was Scandinavian Death Metal.
- The female cardinals continue to bamboozle me by flying away the moment I spot them, or by adamantly remaining in comically unphotographable locations, in the dead middle of a shrub, under a car. I keep talking you up, ladies, but no one will believe how pretty you are if you keep behaving this way.
- How much more money would you have to make to take the metro into DC three days a week?
- Actually, that won’t be bad at all. No more 10 am bird walks, of course, but when the days get longer, there are lots of neat place in the district to see birds. I don’t think access to green space at lunch should be a defining consideration for a job, but I wouldn’t completely discount it as an attraction, either.
- I hope people realize that when the days get longer, they'll be getting the newsletter at like 10:30 pm. You can't make me go inside in the summer.
- [blinking] Now, THAT blue jay seems to have a whole-ass sandwich.
BOTD: The yellow-bellied sapsucker. A first timer on Sara Kate's Bird of the Day. You can’t see his yellow belly in the photo, but it really is there. I personally think they are among the uglier of woodpeckers, but it was still a genuine treat to see him in a tree right next door this morning.
There is nowhere in the US where yellow-bellied sapsuckers live year-round. They have a breeding range, a non-breeding range, and one chunk in the middle that is just migration. Where I live is right on the colorless fringes of no range at all. It always feels special to see one, because they aren’t going to raise a family here, and they aren’t going to spend all summer here. When you see a YBSS around here, they are always just passing through.
