June 20, 2026 - Scott Hines, Guest Birder

Guest Birder of the Day: Have I ever got a treat for you today. I am away for a quick overnight trip and managed to enlist the popular, talented, and all-around terrific Scott Hines, known to many as ActionCookbook, to cover. Enjoy your one day break from me!

I have long held a mildly-adversarial relationship with birds.

My greatest avian enemy is not an uncommon one, of course. I hate the Canada Goose with my life, and it hates me back with an equal fervor; perhaps a greater one, in fact, as the Canada Goose has a capacity for hatred that exceeds human physiology. Sharks can smell a drop of blood from a mile away, and geese can hate your fucking guts before they even meet you. For years at a previous job, my pleasant I’m-using-every-goddamn-minute-of-my-lunch-break walks were often punctuated by a minute or two of terror as one of those jackwagon waterfowl decided I’d come too close to their territory in a goddamned public park, a human one. 

I digress. I don’t think the geese have many defenders, so who am I making this case to?

I haven’t had a great history with the less-commonly-reviled members of Class Aves, either. For years, I swore that the “only good bird” was the crow, and that wasn’t just a bit. I’d read about how crows recognize people and will bring them shiny objects if they like them, and as someone who loves both shiny objects and the approval of others, I really wanted to befriend a crow. A couple years ago, a handful took up in the trees at the back of my yard, and I happily rushed out, calling out statements of friendship as I scattered walnut pieces across the yard. 

The crows ignored me, and an hour later I looked out back to see my dog munching on yard walnuts.

(If you feel like googling “are walnuts bad for dogs”, I just now did that too, and the answer is “yes, probably”, so this is where I should tell you this dog is an 80-pound lummox who has eaten chocolate on numerous occasions with no apparent ill effects. He once ate 17 days of an Advent calendar, and an equivalent portion of the cardboard surrounding it. He is, veterinarianally speaking, Too Big To Fail. Again, I digress.)

My most common foe in the avian world is with the common house finch. 

That’s a really stupid enemy to have, Scott.

I know.

Like, it’s not respectable.

Again, I’m aware.

It’s like being in a public feud with Greg Kinnear.

He knows what he did.

And no, it’s not becoming of me as a middle-aged man to be in a multi-year war with a tiny and nondescript bird, but I didn’t ask for this fight. I simply bought a house with an outdoor light sconce that sits directly under a deep eave, one which I will concede I would also think was a perfect place to build a nest if I were a bird. I am not a bird, however–I probably should have said that up front–and I do not wish to have my house burn down due to twigs and straw being piled up on a lighting fixture installed by a former owner who did a lot of DIY electrical work. As a result, I have spent each of the past nine springs in a battle of wills against the house finches: they begin a nest, I remove the nest. I am not a monster, though: I would never think to remove a nest that had eggs in it, and not just because I just found out that’s the law anyways. Thus, our competing paths to victory are clear: I must remove the nest before they lay eggs in it, and they must lay eggs in the nest before I remove it. It is an unequal battle, one in which I serve as the Margaret Thatcher to their Provisional IRA: I must be lucky every time; they only need to be lucky once.

They have been lucky twice.

In both 2023 and 2024, the finches have caught me sleeping and/or on vacation, and successfully laid eggs in my eave.

The first time this happened, I immediately pivoted from “asshole with a broom and a Kroger bag” to “doting stepfather”, keeping a daily but respectful watch over the eggs as they waited and incubated and eventually turned into tiny, gross, adorable birds.

Maybe I was wrong about the finches, I thought. Maybe I should welcome their presence two inches from my back door. What’s the harm, really? They're cute.

I deeply underestimated how much shit baby birds produce. That’s on me; I have raised several human babies, and those things shit all the time. For all the heartache that those human babies have caused me, though, they have never done anything that required me to power-wash my eave. 

Thus, my battle resumed. In 2025, I remained sternly vigilant, removing any signs of a nest before it even progressed past foundation work. I even spoke directly to one of the finches one day, admonishing them to move on to a new location before it was too late as it watched uncomprehendingly from a nearby fencepost. The sconce stayed clear all season, and the finches moved on.

Well, it’s 2026. I’ve enjoyed reading Sara Kate’s blog every day this year, and I’ve even downloaded the Merlin app. I’ve learned to tell apart the songs of robins and cardinals and sparrows. 

And I haven’t had to remove a single twig so far this year.

[opens Merlin app] I should call them.

--Scott Hines, often known online as @actioncookbook

If you enjoy my writing and also don't consider me a monster for having removed EMPTY, UNFINISHED nests in past years, you can read more at The Action Cookbook Newsletter (actioncookbook.com).