July 23, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 8:08 am

Bird Species: house sparrow, northern cardinal, American crow, American robin, northern mockingbird, European starling, mourning dove

Things I Thought About:

• Over two years ago, now, I think, I had a gum surgery and the place where he tied off the stitches produced a hard little bump on my gum. It has been there ever since, and sometime, for no reason, it hurts so bad, like there might still be a stitch in it. It gets hot and pokes at me. It is doing that this week. It is extremely hateful.
• I am bereft of God.
• Not really, but it's a very fun thing to say, out loud, with a fancy English accent.
• It feels really good out today. I am attempting a bold new experiment, the Irish hello. I think I will fuck around the house this morning and go in to work just whenever.
• The birds around here look like absolute hell.
• Remember when Randy Johnson exploded that gull? What were the odds, do you suppose?
• I need to plan some time off. My sister and niece went to the beach this week. I dislike the beach, but I love the ocean. The time to go to the beach is November.
• I think I'd like those places you see in movies about New England, where the ocean just slams against rocks, not sand. Where are good places to see that?
• Maybe that was old England. Maybe you don't get that here.
• Shetland on the television show Shetland looks insanely beautiful, but it is wild to not have trees.
• I'm reading an excellent novel set in the Australian outback. I think I would suffer a lot in the Australian outback.
• What on earth is wrong with that bird,

BOTD: Northern mockingbird, this specific one. Look at this guy. He is a MESS.

He was straight up glaring at me. I love him?

Mockingbirds do molt once or twice a year, and fledglings usually do a slow molt, and I suspect that's what's happening here. He looked young and little awkward.

As part of my commitment to fucking around this morning, I looked up mockingbird plumage when I got home and learned that mockingbirds sometimes do something called a "fright molt," which is exactly what one might infer from the name. In the presence of predators, they can spontaneously shed a bunch of a feathers. I love the whole idea of this. You're a mockingbird, the toughest little fucker on the block, and a hawk grabs you by the feathers, and you, evolutionarily, say "SCREW YOU, KEEP 'EM" and drop all your feathers and make a break for it. I love these shitty little birds.