June 19, 2026

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 4:55 pm

Bird Species: Carolina chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, northern cardinal, eastern phoebe, song sparrow, indigo bunting, red-winged blackbird, Canada goose, mallard, green heron, osprey, blue-gray gnatcatcher, barn swallow, great egret, great blue heron, common yellowthroat, common grackle, red-headed woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• Well, I am comfortable saying that Disclosure Day is not as good as E.T.
• In Disclosure Day, Colin Firth is dressed and styled exactly like Victor Kiriakis from 1980s Days of our Lives. Deeply villainous hair and scarf. The resemblance was very distracting.
• The actor who played Victor Kiriakis is Jennifer Anniston's father.
• Wyatt Russell was in the movie today. I like him quite a bit. He is exactly what I would imagine the actor child of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn would be like.
• People give nepo babies in Hollywood a lot of shit, but it stands to reason that people with a lot of talent and charisma would have children with a lot of talent and charisma. Jack Quaid is good, Wyatt Russell is good, Taylor Whosis from The Pitt is good. It's fine. Nepo babies in Hollywood are fine and are part of a long and distinguished tradition.
• Everyone except for Ray Nicholson, who seems to have gotten all of Jack's shit-eating smarm but none of his talent or charisma.
• I think I am taking the weirdest photo of a great blue heron ever taken. This is the wildest angle. I so rarely see them in the trees here, the way this giant tree dwarfs such a large bird is genuinely disorienting.

• After the movie, which I saw at the movie theater at the mall, I bought three dresses. Someone needs to invite me somewhere.
• It's windy today, so much so that the water is moving quickly enough to make the boardwalk do that thing where it feels like the place where you are sitting stationary is moving. This is a feeling I associate almost exclusively with sitting on docks. It is a very summertime feeling.
• Nostalgia is a very toxic impulse, and it's one to which I have been too much prone lately. Thinking about docks has me thinking about church camps and pontoon boats and that cast party at someone's grandparents' lake house where I heard a boy play "Wish You Were Here" on the guitar for the first time.
• A fateful day. The inciting incident, a fatal weakness, a knack for being easily impressed, a pattern that is...truly awful. There are so many mediocre guitar boys.
• Everyone I've ever heard on a banjo plays a great banjo, though. It's like if you play a banjo in public at all, you can really play the banjo.
• Should I take up the guitar? I begged for one when I was 16. It's sitting in the corner of my living room, 38 years later, and I still can't play an F chord.
• So far this year: what if I get ripped, what if I take up kayaking, what if I learn to play the guitar, as a bit?
• I am watching three egrets, which I call Threegrets!
• I have just said this out loud, in the "Treehouse of Horror" Frogurt voice. I think that guy with the 600 lens heard me.
• What if I try to be normal at the swamp, as a bit?

BOTD: Great egrets. Which I call threegrets!

They are such pretty birds, and they like to hang out with turtles (meaning they like to hang out on logs.) They tend to hop and fly even short distances, and they look uncommonly graceful with those pure white ruffled wings.

Two of them caught fish while I was watching. I was switching my attention back and forth with the lens, when these two started moving closer to each other, and eventually crossed each other in the viewfinder. It was delightful.

The one who flew over to the turtles had not yet caught a fish when I left, but I have faith in him. I think he'll get one eventually.