June 13, 2026

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 6:35 am

Bird Species: northern cardinal, Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, indigo bunting, blue-gray gnatcatcher, red-winged blackbird, barn swallow, American goldfinch, prothonotary warbler, Canada goose, wood duck, great blue heron, osprey, great egret, mallard, downy woodpecker, common yellow-throat, green heron, orchard oriole

Things I Thought About:

• Last night I watched a television series that I can only describe as "ludicrous," based on a book series that I can only describe as "popular and absurd". It is about the love entanglements of a college hockey team, and it is full of 19-year-olds who have seven orgasms every time and talk like they've been in therapy for decades. I have read most of these Off Campus books, because I always have time for smut, but I do spend most of them shaking my head and saying, "these are college juniors."
• I started it before 9 pm, noticed quite early that it bore almost no resemblance to the novels, kept watching, said "the next episode has to be the last one" three times, then looked at my watch when it was over and saw that it was 3:37 am and that my alarm would go off for birdwatching in slightly less than two hours. I am struggling to find my enthusiasm for this outing.
• God gives His toughest fights to his dumbest soldiers.
• The only bird I've seen up close so far today are a handful of big gnatties flitting around a single tree at the start of the boardwalk. Slow morning.

• It is very funny to me how every young male actor now has to list "of course I know how to ice skate" under special skills the way they had to list "of course I can ride a horse" in the 80s.
• I thought last night's rains would manifest as a little more water in the ponds, but it is mostly manifesting as a low-lying haze over the open meadow. Pretty, but quiet today. I think the birds are sleeping in. Wish I was.

• I spy the prothonotary warbler, who makes himself completely visible, absolutely unobscured, flying in close to me, mouth open, singing. I take half a dozen photos. It flies away the moment a group of eight people who have been kind of crowding me all morning turn the boardwalk corner. They never know it was there. I am a nice woman, helpful and a team player, but this does give me immense satisfaction.

• I saw the osprey dive from a great distance, and when I reach the observation tower he is perched up, drying his wings. I have never seen one settled quite like this, just chilling in the sun, with his wings dangling. The way he's arranged, he looks like he's sitting in the wings, like one of those stiff crinolines Marie Antoinette would tie on to keep her skirts as a wide as a door.

• It has been dead out here this morning, which is the most spoiled thing for anyone who hangs out here to think, and always means "I've seen about twenty species but none of them are really doing much." The osprey isn't diving, the kingbirds (on the nest today, and definitely with babies) aren't letting us see the kids, and everyone is mad at this beautiful bird for just standing around, not fishing.

• On the walk back out, on the woods trail, there are occasional showers of rain for a few yards. The sun is evaporating off enough moisture to upset the balance in the trees and send last night's rain drops spilling off the leaves in long soaking bursts. It's a nice effect, one that I always notice when it happens.
• A male orchard oriole is nectaring in the trumpet flowers, something I didn't know they did. I thought that was just hummingbird stuff, but that is definitely what he's doing, sticking his head in each bud and drinking up. I capture a sub-mediocre photo of this. He's a tough catch in general, his colors are so dark, and the way he's quite a ways away hopping from branch to branch and bud to bud isn't helping. Still, it's something I've never seen before, a nice little observation, to be the last bird I see today.

• Some news: I have a new nemesis bird, the indigo bunting, who sings constantly and lives to thwart and defy me and sends his boring-ass dull brown wife out to handle his calls. Update your spreadsheets accordingly, we hate this bird. It simply will not consent to being birdwatched by me.

BOTD: the common yellowthroat, a well-named bird. These birds have a beautiful song, and they are all over this park in the spring and summer. They are usually a real scavenger hunt kind of bird. You can hear them from all over the place, and spend a lot of time saying "it's gotta be right there," and then when you find him he's a million mile away and basically invisible in the understory. Every year when they come back, I'm surprised to be reminded how small they are. A lot of song in that little body.

I had heard a few this morning, all at distance like the photo above, and then suddenly, just feet away from the boardwalk, there were two. They were both males, and they weren't singing, they were hopping back and forth from marsh shrub to shrub, acting a little like warblers do, landing and flying off and coming back to the same area. These two looked young to me. It was nice to see them so close and unobscured by greenery, something I rarely get to experience.

I left the park and went to the farmer's market, came home and ate lunch, then lay down for a nap and accidentally slept for six and half hours. This is a disaster, and I am a disaster.