March 23, 2026

Where: around my complex

When: 12:16pm

Bird Species: house sparrow, song sparrow, northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, tufted titmouse, Caroline chickadee, red-bellied woodpecker, white-throated sparrow, downy woodpecker, blue jay, dark-eyed junco, American robin, American crow

Things I Thought About:

• In Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey comes home very tired from a diplomatic trip for the Foreign Office, trying to keep a small dispute from becoming a huge one, and he says something along the lines of “For a moment I thought—for a moment we all thought—something might be going to happen, but in the end, you know, it made a noise like a hoop and rolled away.” The novels were written between the World Wars, Lord Peter was a major on the Western front, and I think about that passage a lot, especially when I think about our only president of the united states, who always backs down, who will have to do it again, and who has made us demonstrably less secure in every particular, and I wonder how many times we can expect the Something to make a noise like a hoop and roll away.
• I always found that phrase so evocative! Conjured up something deeply ominous, barreling right towards you, and then just rolling away, whew, it was a toy all along. I found out years later that Lord Peter Wimsey was himself quoting a mildly risqué little music-hall song about ladies who use slang, and it is just as bratty and silly as “make like a tree and leave.”
• A very hot book, is Gaudy Night. Eminently quotable, too.
• Oh, there’s a fox sparrow! Neat! I must immediately backtrack on my statement that “an unlikely bird is always your bird of the day” because the fox sparrow is unlikely today, but I think they are ugly. Sorry.

• I have been reminded by a Reel that the song "Summer, Highland Falls" exists, and in my head, I am now meandering through the enormous oeuvre of one Dr. William Joel. A massive library of tunes.
• Is Billy Joel very good? Or am I merely very washed? There is literally no way to tell.
• I saw Billy Joel in concert at The Omni in Atlanta in 1987.
• Why am I 700 years old? Why did my loving parents allow their youngest daughter, a literal baby, ride off to the Omni with a teenager who had a driver’s license in 1987?
• I wonder how many people reading tonight’s newsletter have parents who had not yet met in 1987?
• Whoa, girl fight. That’s spring, all right.

• Should I apologize on the blog for not posting the bird walk yesterday? I did take yesterday's photo yesterday, so technically I have fulfilled the brief. 
• I have, incredibly, more than just my long-term, online pals getting the newsletter now, and although I did a lot of thinking on my bird walk yesterday most of it I would not tell strangers at gunpoint.
• I should consider a mini-feature of birds that appear in the tippy-top of the tree by my balcony. Yesterday, that mockingbird, today, a song sparrow.

• "Summer, Highland Falls" is a good song.
• “Don't Ask Me Why” is a good song.
• “Pressure” is a good song.
• That song “Pressure” from Encanto is a good song, too.

BOTD: blue jay. I watched him crack open a huge husk of something or other, and then stall out, and his eyes were clearly saying “What did I just do, I can’t swallow this,” which is very funny to me. He’s blue. The dogwood is blooming. It’s spring. I like these photos. A blue jay is a good bird.