June 22, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 4:35 pm

Bird Species: house sparrow, house finch, gray catbird, European starling, mourning dove, red-bellied woodpecker, song sparrow, common grackle, northern cardinal

Things I Thought About:

• When I conceived the idea of a bird every day, one thing I did not consider was how weeks would go by, and you really just see the same six or seven birds every day. I'm certain this is very boring content.
• Still nettled by Disclosure Day. Steven Spielberg made dinosaurs that still look great, and elevated visual effects to a level from which there is no going back. He had to know that fox looked like shit.
• I have decided to get ripped, because I think it would be very funny to take a selfie on my 55th birthday next year where I look like an athlete, but I don't really know how to start. I wish there was literally any exercise that strengthens your knees that doesn't require using your knees.
• My knees are my Achilles heel, in addition to my actual Achilles heel, where I have bursitis.
• There is a grackle in the finch tree. To be fair, there is also a finch in the finch tree, but this grackle looks dope as hell.

• I pass a father and his young teenage son, who is giving him absolute hell about asking his new girlfriend so many questions at brunch yesterday. "We've gone to the same school since kindergarten!" The dad is laughing and apologizing at the same time; the boy is apoplectic. It's very sweet. Shout out the dads, who I forgot to shout out yesterday.
• Unless your dad is absent or sucks, in which case fuck that guy.
• I simply do not believe a major motion picture studio can't find a good-looking real fox to walk into a room and look at somebody.
• I believe I drank 24 whole entire ounces of water today, breaking the previous five weeks combined, probably. I have logged back into all my apps. I am well on my way to fully restored health and wellness.
• I should maybe hire a trainer? Meaning, I should maybe hire someone to spend an hour showing me what I should be doing at the gym that I already pay for.
• I should also do my goddamn ankle PT, which I have mentioned once a month at least all year.
• Physical therapy is such a racket. When I do it, I don't hurt so much, but I have to do it. That's how they get you.

BOTD: red-bellied woodpecker. He is BOTD because I haven't seen one in a few weeks, and because he was the only bit of a challenge today, as I am in a bit of a bird rut with the neighborhood denizens.

I haven't listed a red-bellied woodpecker for over a month, for one reason or another, so when I saw this young one fly in, I was pretty stoked. Then he picked the densest, fullest tree on the street to approach, and I couldn't get a clear shot of him for love or money.

This tree was in someone's yard, and not one of the houses where I have made friends with the owners. I really tried to find the angle, and the occasional breaks in the leaf coverage, but this was a scenario that if I wanted to circle around to find a better view I'd have to not only breach the property line, but actually climb their steps almost to the porch, which made me, a morbidly conscientious rule-follower, much too nervous to contemplate. It's one thing to take a few forbidden steps from sidewalk into a driveway, but quite another to literally transcend the sidewalk onto someone's property. Couldn't be me.

So I did the best I could, from almost underneath him on the sidewalk, while this little rascal stayed as close to the thickest tree limbs as he could and kept his head down almost the whole time. I don't suppose it's fair to be annoyed with him for that; he is, after all, a woodpecker.