January 9, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 11:30am

Bird Species: house sparrow, American crow, mourning dove, Northern mockingbird

Things I Thought About:

• It’s cloudy and chilly and the light is dreadful, and I think it’s supposed to rain again in an hour. I bet I don’t see a single bird.
• I’m never going to see a peregrine falcon again, I can’t believe how badly I whiffed that one.
• Belloq walking across the worksite when Indiana Jones is in the Well of Souls. He has on a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled back exactly so, and a thin brown belt and brown shoes and a little neck scarf, and he is immaculate in the middle of all that dust and heat. Belloq is a very sexy villain.
• Man, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a good movie. I randomly put it on for background first thing this morning, and every time I looked at the television an iconic thing was happening. It’s amazing how much movie there is in that movie.
• They almost named him Indiana Smith, can you imagine.
• Marian gets to drink and swear and be tricky and tough, and also gets the scream and be scared, and also gets to show up at the end of the movie in a suit and hat with her hair done. Incredible. If they had made Raiders in 2021 Marian’s only job would be handing him the medallion, kissing his boo-boos on the boat, and saying “You’ll find it, Indy. I believe in you.”
• People were allowed to look human in movies then, too. Harrison Ford as Indy has a great “a normal man in great shape” body. Men today have to shred to get any action role. And women, again; I was watching The Warriors not long ago and Debroah Van Valkenburgh looks so great, and she doesn’t look like anybody else. In general, the movies were better when a guy like Walter Matthau in the lead could greenlight your movie, and the women didn’t all look like each other. 
• Sandra Bullock was so fresh and not like anybody else when she first hit.
• THERE'S A SORA AT MY SWAMP. I just got a text! The weather better clear up this weekend.
• That Raiders script is so great. I cannot believe the same guy wrote Dreamcatcher.
• I hate this gray weather, but maybe I mostly hate that I’m now a person whose old injuries act up when it rains. I hate my knees.
• I guess I get why Lawrence Kasdan was on board Dreamcatcher. Those scenes with the guys in the cabin are very The Big Chill-coded, except terrible, with all that awful throwback slang that Stephen King wields so famously on the page. It sounds cretinous on film, always.
• Damian Lewis's English accent is so terrible in Dreamcatcher that you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out he was English for real.
• Birds should carry ring lights; they look awful on camera right now.

BOTD: the Northern mockingbird. They are incredibly vain and are very cooperative about posing and preening for a bit. The default bird when you must get a decent picture of a bird.