July 9, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 6:40 am

Bird Species: gray catbird, European starling, fish crow, mourning dove, house sparrow, northern flicker, house finch, northern mockingbird, American crow

Things I Thought About:

• Catbirds look blue-ish in the morning gloom as they fly by. Moody. I like it.
• It is quite overcast and gray, and the light meter is flashing a good bit as I try to focus in. I wonder if it's startling to birds. My suspicion is that they don't notice at all, but it is kind of attention grabbing for the humans out and about.

• There is a certain variety of electric vehicle (maybe a hybrid? I'm hopeless with cars, even more than with trees) that when it starts and sits at idle, it sounds like the opening chord of the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• See, there is literally no way to sus out the politics of the occupants of this home, because they also have a 250 American flag and a red, white and blue wreath on the door. Is this just a piece commemorating the semiquincentennial, or is it a tombstone? Who can say.

• I don't think we can hold the 250 branding against anybody. That shit should have been cool, dammit, and almost anyone else in history could have pulled it off.
• My parents talked about the Bicentennial well into my late childhood; I would have been four and I remember a lot of fireworks on television, and maybe some old-timey ships like in Schoolhouse Rock. Or maybe I just remember those from Kearney saying it on The Simpsons.
• Anyway, the way to engage with a neighbor whose leanings who can't quite discern is a friendly wave and to holler, "There are chickadees in your tree!" as you keep walking.
• There were not any chickadees in their tree today, but they have had them before. I have a pretty good memory for that. Landmarks. There's a tree on the route that had a flock of robins eating winterberries in it every time I passed in February, and I still have to check it out every time I pass, even though the winterberry holly is long gone.
• "That's the bench where I saw the prothonotary warbler," I will burble to the reporters who come to report my life story.
• The reporters are there because it's July 4th and I'm 104 years old, and they want to know how I lived to see the Tricentennial, and I will say "naked spite."

BOTD: gray catbird. Love those cinnamon-colored undertail coverts. There were birds around today, but it was terribly dark for seven am, and tough to dial in on any bird in any kind of cover. I picked catbird because the flicker photo was hopeless.