January 31, 2026

Where: my complex

When: 1:20pm

Bird Species: blue jay, house sparrow, American robin, dark-eyed-junco, downy woodpecker, European starling

Things I Thought About:

• A bunch of personal shit with which I will not bore.
• Rachel McAdams gets to do anything she wants to to any man, imo.
• I am so fucking bored of these birds and these buildings. I genuinely thought some of the parks would have cleared today, but the two I stopped to check on definitely are not. I can’t imagine why I thought a trailhead lot would be clear and the trail passable when the parking lots at the movie theatre aren’t yet. 
• I’m sick of these blue jays.
• It is crazy not to be at a park on a Saturday.
• I don’t know how to explain what I mean, but dark-eyed juncos always look like they are in disguise. I think it’s the pink beak; it looks wildly out of place in all the dark head feathers. It looks like they’ve pulled a cap down low and put on a Groucho nose.

• Good for Violet Bridgerton, I guess. I do think she should be able to explain an orgasm to at least one daughter, though.
• It is outrageous for that squirrel to be posing in an actual knot in a tree, like I’m shooting for a nature magazine or something.

• The robins are back, with a vengeance. They are all flocked together on those trees in the back, the ones that have had red berries all winter. I don’t think it’s holly, though? I thought those grew on bushes, and these are real trees. (Note: I looked this up and those trees are called Winterberry Holly, so I came as close to a blind guess as to what a tree is called as it is possible to come, I think.)
• The robins look absolutely ridiculous, the broken eye-ring looks like they’ve cried their make-up off. Actual clowns. I like how they flock together, though. You won’t see them in groups like this when the weather gets warmer.
• Shout out to that downy woodpecker, who is banging away so quickly and aggressively it sounds like downtown Asheville in 1998.
• Rabbit, Rabbit tomorrow morning, which means I have posted every day in January, which is a much better start to a new year’s resolution than most. 
• New Year’s Resolutions don’t have to start until the Monday after the Super Bowl, though. That’s the last day of the winter holiday eating season.

BOTD: Downy woodpecker. Looking back, I was kind of surprised I've never mentioned them, I see them often enough. They are the smallest of the woodpeckers I see around here, and are much less vocal than the red-bellies and flickers. They can really take a chunk out of a limb, too. That tiny beak can make quite an impression, literally. Hairy woodpeckers look almost exactly like them, but their beaks are longer and their heads kind of more oval, so it's nice of this guy to be in profile where I can be sure his proportions are correct to be a downy. This particular one I'd know he was a downy just because of how small he is.

I'm not sure if this is true according to the field guides, but in my experience, you look for the red bellies, pileated, and flickers on the trunks of trees, and these guys out on the limbs, and usually on the underside. He's a pretty cool little bird.