January 6, 2026

Where: sidewalks in the complex and in the neighborhood of single-family homes behind me

When: 7:30am

Bird Species: Northern cardinal, blue jay, European starling, Northern mockingbird, house sparrow, American crow, Cooper's Hawk, American robin, red-bellied woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• There are four blue jays in that brushy tree. One of them is just kind of hopping up and down and not screaming, for a change. I assume this is sex. I must look it up when I get home. (Note: yep.) 
• The talk-to-text function typed European starling as European darling. It also regularly makes mincemeat out of tufted titmouse, often in a weirdly sexual way, tested his mouth, top to tip mouse. All talk-to-text tools are extremely biased against my southern accent.
• Alex Trebek made fun of my southern accent, too, a fact no one ever wants to hear, but I’m going to post it anyway. Think how I felt! I guess I said “pericardium” in a manner that tickled him, which I get, but it did make me self-conscious. One cannot concentrate on maintaining a radio voice under that kind of stress. 
• Whyyyy did that guy do that on the Final Jeopardy! last night? Makes no sense at all.
• Oooh, hawk! I see red-shouldered hawks (a gorgeous hawk) a good bit around here, but the Cooper's aren’t quite as present. I wonder how far into this guy’s backyard I could get before feeling like I might get yelled at. I will never be a great wildlife photographer because, regrettably, I am scared of rule-breaking. I have seen beautiful photos of birds in the Facebook groups for some of my favorite spots and rarely, but memorably, someone will get absolutely raked over the coals by 100 birders for going off trail until they have to turn the comments off. Couldn't be me.
• I don’t know how to describe this WHERE? on the blog. It’s the walk I take every morning, but it’s definitely not “my neighborhood.” Except I recognize all the dogs and some of the other morning walkers, and the crossing guard at the elementary school knows me, so maybe it is my neighborhood, except my condo is 624 square feet and their homes go for $700K. What’s a neighborhood in this context? 
• Look at that mockingbird. What an asshole.

BOTD: Cooper's hawk. I will stipulate that this is not a good photo, but when you see a big-ass hawk low in someone's backyard that's the bird of the day.