June 5, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 5:35 pm

Bird Species: house sparrow, house finch, European starling, American robin, American crow, gray catbird, northern cardinal

Things I Thought About:

• TGIF, amirite???
• I picked up my new eyeglasses yesterday and I can see through walls, but I could use some practice, because we are doing everything, folks. We upped the prescription by a whole number in one eye, we are trying the progressive lenses in lieu of bifocals, we are correcting for astigmatism, we are spending a lot of money on eyeglasses!!
• They were good all day in front of a screen, and the lower part of the lens is good for scrolling my phone, but the progressive lenses will take some getting used to. I'll be interested to see how they are for birding! 99% of the time I wear my contacts for that anyway. The contacts that are not in yet, because I also bought fancy ones of those.
• These glasses are not great for birding, actually. I dart my eyes around too quickly when I'm looking, so I keep catching the area where the progressive lenses, um...progress. Just a little blur before my head catches up to my eyes, but distracting enough for a bird to stay half a step ahead of me.
• I bet if you did a systematic review of the literature, the literature being the diaries, lists, and observations of individual bird watchers, one would find an astronomical increase in comparisons to dinosaurs post-1993.

• It is so funny to me that we have no idea what dinosaurs looked like. It's all made up. Every five years or so, "they had feathers," "they could run faster than horses," "a T-Rex might have been built like a giant penguin." Five years from now they're gonna say they rode Quetzalcoatlus around in little handmade saddles and spoke five languages and I'm going to say "okay."
• InGen was stupid to go into theme parks; the market was for boutique house pets.
• Stop being cute. Nobody likes you.

• The End of Oak Street looks like a good time. I have always liked Anne Hathaway, and Anne Hathaway in her forties has been really interesting. She seems like the kind of actor that will do good work forever.
• It's weird how little I've heard about Disclosure Day. Isn't it supposed to be a summer movie? Doesn't it come out like next week?? I hope it's good, but the title is bad. The title makes me think of a board meeting before a merger, or a hard-hitting movie about professional football team culture, for some reason.
• Every year I get the email from the COA and think "eh, no rush, I only went to the pool like twice last year" and then I am sweating from a walk after work on a Friday and I'd love to jump in the pool and I haven't got my pool pass yet. This has happened all the years I have lived in this complex. I do not learn things.

BOTD: American robin. I have gone soft on this bird. I used to just call him a clown but now he is a clown prince. A lot of bird song, a lot of chatter, a loud one. He's ridiculous and loyal.

His thick broken eye ring always makes him look a little discombobulated, like he's been crying but has just barely reassembled himself to go back to the party.

This one was singing, VERY loudly, and VERY close, and I could not find him and could not find him and could NOT find him. You would be surprised how long it can take to find a bird, singing non-stop, bright orange breast, in a single tree. Not even a tall tree, just a dense one.

It was fun. On a worse day, it could have been immensely frustrating, but what the hell, it's Friday. Pokémon-style challenge. Gotta catch 'em all.