March 17, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 7:40am

Bird Species: northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, American robin, European starling, house sparrow, song sparrow, red-bellied woodpecker, white-throated sparrow, dark-eyed junco, American crow, common grackle, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch

Things I Thought About:

• The song sparrows are singing away this morning. It’s a pretty little song, with an almost electronic sort of timber to it, like an old-fashioned ringtone from a corded phone. There’s one hiding in the pretty yellow bushes in a yard, but one time a person who lives here opened the door and then just…closed it…without smiling, or a wave, or any acknowledgment at all, when I smiled and waved my binoculars at them while pointing at a bird in their tree. Bone-chilling. This is a house where I will be careful how long I hang out on the sidewalk, staring at their forsythia.
• I do not know the names of plants, but I know the name of that one, which grew in abundance in the yard of my childhood home. I can recognize azaleas, honeysuckle, and Queen Anne’s Lace for the same reason. And monkey grass, although I suspect that isn't the actual name.
• "Forsythia" would be a good name for a lady in a Edwardian novel. 
• I once knew an actual real-life woman in her 80s named Hyacinth Clingmore, which sounds like the name of a Bond girl, and when I knew her, she was certainly of the right vintage for that.
• This red-bellied woodpecker is moving around this big tree in such an odd way. He’s neither hopping nor flying, it’s like he's folded his wings to his sides, swore not to move a muscle, and is simply falling from branch to branch. It’s a very strange and arresting sight, vaguely cinematic, like he should be on wires.

• I was given the instruction to rinse with saltwater “unless you have high blood pressure” and I can’t stop thinking about it. Is high blood pressure that is well-controlled by medications so threatened by a gum abrasion? Are we all so very precariously balanced and maintained that four days of a salt rinse will give me a stoke? 
• I am for sure going to rinse with salt water, but it will be genuinely mortifying if that’s what kills me.
• Am I talking too much about dying on the blog? I can’t lie; it is a Thing I Think About nearly every day. You'll get there.
• The more I have committed to watching birds every single day the more I feel like all my observations up until now are wrong, or at the very least are completely insufficient. I was sure the juncos were gone, but here is a very healthy handful of males and females both, foraging around. I see a white-throated sparrow, too, and I had written them off two weeks ago. I was relatively certain that blue jays only went around in singles or pairs, but I keep seeing four and five at a time. 
• Not that I can get them in the same tree at the same time. “Fine, be that way!” was such an unimpeachable last word in a middle school argument, and it turns out to serve the same purpose with blue jays.

• I just put all my gloves and mittens away in the coat closet this weekend and I could definitely use a pair. I for one think it is very normal for the temperature to fluctuate by 40 degrees day to day. 
• The auto-focus struggles to want to dial in when the camera is cold, too. It is not an all-weather rig. Not a bit waterproof either, yet another reason why I refuse to let the desire to take good pictures overtake my desire to look at birds.

BOTD: northern cardinal. In defiance of my every principle, I did some research. Turns out, cardinals do molt! And the pictures are like nothing on Earth. That is decidedly NOT what is happening with the cardinals around here. It only happens in the fall and winter, and the feathers completely fall out, although, to be fair, not usually all at once. If I ever see it, you better believe it will appear on the bird blog.

The suggested reasons for why a male cardinal might look white or gray or brown or light, light pink are three: 1) skin condition or leucism, which is very sensible, if this was only one bird, but it's been present to varying degree on a couple I've seen at the same time. 2) is unusual wear and tear, rough conditions, and 3) is diet, and I think both of those relate to the truly dreadful January/February weather we had. I have had cause to mention that all the birds looked pretty busted right after the final melt, when there was finally water for bathing and what not. And it wasn't just a long freeze in the DMV, it was a hard freeze. Nothing was growing, and there was a solid layer of snowcrete on top of the grass for literally weeks. I suspect most of the birds around here were very dependent on feeders and, frankly, human garbage and human garbage cans, for their meals for a good little while there. If I had to make a supposition, which I definitely do not because I have told you a million times this is all just guessing, I would guess they all look a little gray and mottled and glum because they had a tough start to the year, which, same. That is for sure why I am looking gray and mottled and glum.

I hope that's true and the boys find some sumac and seeds and berries with some carotene soon and they perk right up. But in the meantime I don't mind it. A glossy bright red cardinal has real fuckboi vibes, but a couple that looks like the one below is Popeye and Olive Oyl, and I find that much more relatable.