March 7, 2026

Where: Cross County Trail at Eakin Community Park

When: 12:45pm

Bird Species: downy woodpecker, northern cardinal, mallard, fish crow, tufted titmouse, Carolina chickadee, red-shouldered hawk, red-bellied woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, American crow

Things I Thought About:

• I am thinking about my terrible niece, who just jacked me up for another $24 in Girl Scout cookies at her booth outside the grocery store.
• Another gray day, but at least tomorrow will be light for longer.
• I’m so happy to see ducks in this pond! It’s actually pretty exciting to see water in this pond. It has dried and filled a dozen times, just impossible to know from season to season what you’re going to get. 

• There have at times been two huge snappers that live in this pond, and I have traded dozens of kids a bag of pond pellets for their bags of bread. I hope they wake up soon, too. The sliders and mud turtles have been about on warm days, but I haven't seen a snapper yet this year.
• Man, those ducks are such a handsome couple, such lovely colors and patterns against all the muddy brown.
• So much of birding is just waiting to see if a titmouse is going to come down any closer or just hop around 20 feet overhead all day. They rarely do come down for me, but the good thing is there is probably a chickadee hanging around, too, and they will come down to eat lower. Those two hang out together all the time, the way cardinals and white throated sparrows do.

• That pileated woodpecker has picked the worst possible framing and distance for photos, but at least he isn’t vanishing into another dimension the way the one at Huntley does.
• I keep confusing myself by saying “It’s 2:25, but it’s really only 1:25” when if fact the time change means it’s actually really 3:25, but the light at 2:25 tomorrow will be 1:25’s light, etc. I’m starting to see where the maniacs who dislike DST are coming from. “Always spring forward, never fall back,” says I, and then every 8 years or so we take a mulligan day and start over again. No one goes to work or school and there are Mulligan Day parades and traditions, like 10:30pm burgers on the grill. Everyone needs a hard reset now and then, I keep saying this.
• Oh, the red-belly is being much more obliging. This is how a woodpecker should behave. Take notes.

• Today's walk started slow. Something I often experience on a bird walk is where nothing is happening, I can’t see any birds, and I’m not really hearing anything either, so I’ll just plant myself and be still for a minute, to try to be more present in the place I am. Then I will start to hear rustles and chirps and calls, getting closer and closer, and then I’ll notice movement, and then suddenly, there they all are, all the usual suspects coming through. That moment, right when their sounds are rising, I can find myself describing this as waiting to see what happens. One could imagine it as hell yeah, the birds are about to start.
• Hopefully the universe finds that kind of arrogance endearing. Of course, almost the opposite is happening. The movement and the noise and the gray skies and the stream and the wind and the frogs and the mud were all already happening, they always already are, all the time, and it is up to me to notch myself into my correct place in all of that. 
• That was then, though, early; now my correct place is saying out loud, "Oh, you are being such a little shit" to the pileated, who really is.

BOTD: mallard. Your classic duck. The males are beautiful, of course, but I really wanted to show off the female. Her feathers look like expensive fabric, a beautiful and luxurious pattern. The patches of silver-gray near the tail glow pearlescent when you catch them in the right light (which apparently, we don't get anymore.)

Once again, I implore you: please do not notice how a mallard's beak looks like a dog's face, with the two eyes and the nose dead center at the tip and the bill climbing in two points like ears. You'll never unsee it if you do.