March 18, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 3:00pm and again at 5:30pm

Bird Species: northern cardinal, house sparrow, American robin, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch, dark-eyed junco, red-bellied woodpecker, northern mockingbird, house finch and mourning dove,

Things I Thought About:

• In the early 80s, TIME Magazine had a commercial with a theme song, and that, out of every song in the history of human existence, is currently in my head. How. How do things like this even happen.
• The couple who lives in the upper floor apartment of the building behind mine are very nice, but I wish they did not call me Bird Lady. Of course I long to be eccentric, but not that eccentric. Not Brenda Fricker in Home Alone 2 eccentric.
• The birds are all pairing off, and I know I hopelessly anthropomorphize, but it’s…nice. I wouldn’t dream of saying it's romantic, or that love is in the air, but when you step outside on a sunny day and every bird you see has another bird with them, it’s nice. I see paired jays, finches, sparrows everywhere, pairs of mourning doves, and three male cardinals pursuing a lady, which is also nice to see.

• ♫ Time flies and you are theeereee ♫ time crieeeees ♫ and lets you caaare ♫  My brain amazes me.
• Even the birds that are jerks are not alone. I see two mockingbirds over there, and one of them is looking as cute and as dumb as any mockingbird ever can. It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you, I think it’s the female. 

• I am not feeling very locked in at my new job yet. This is probably normal for eight days on the job? Someone tell me this is normal for eight days on the job.
• We won at trivia two weeks ago so we got to pick the opening category for last night’s game, and we picked the Original Broadway Cast Recording of A Chorus Line, for evil reasons, as our feeling was if you don’t already know it you’ll hate it. One woman from another team told me, “I tried, I really did, but I didn’t make it through the first number.”
• It’s always hateful when you get to pick the category and then the question is something you can get from reading the Wikipedia entry. 
• One time we picked The Methodist Hymnal, on the principle of “What’s a question only we will get?” People were annoyed. 
• This is time of year where every day it seems crazy how much more the trees have started to leaf. More buds and blossoms and color every day.
• ♫ Throughout your world ♫ throughout your land ♫  Time puts it all right in your haaaaaand♫ 
• Maybe I just have time on my mind? Best not to think about it.

BOTD: the white-breasted nuthatch. This tree is on the neighboring property so this as probably as good a photo as I will ever get, but they are definitely nesting in there. There were two yesterday, carrying things in.

This guy was really stocking up on seeds and husks. He'd fly off, come right back with a mouthful of something, and then rub it back and forth on the tree, back and forth and back and forth in big arcs of his head to crack it open. It reminded me of a toy, he went about it so methodically, before carrying whatever it was inside and going back for more.

If you zoom too close, in every photo he's blurry from the distance, but I think they're nice little captures anyway. You can see that's busy, working on the house.