May 10, 2026

Where: Cross County Trail at Eakin Community Park

When: 10:45 am

Bird Species: northern mockingbird, eastern bluebird, downy woodpecker, yellow-rumped warbler, unidentified warblers, blue-gray gnatcatcher

Things I Thought About:

• It's hot! And buggy. Soon when I am out, I will be wearing an essential piece of equipment, the neck fan. I could not look like a bigger fucking dork with it on, but it does keep the gnats away from my face.
• Today is shaping up to be the opposite of yesterday: always looking in the wrong place. I can hear several different warblers, and can see two, a million yards away and straight up. I am genuinely hurting my neck, craning to follow the little hoppy guys in the tippy-tops of the trees, so I think I must give up on the small birds.
• It's crowded on the trail today, a lot of families out still in their church clothes, obviously a Mother's Day stroll.
• My mom would often call me Katie. No one else did or does; my sister sometimes calls me Kate or Kater or Katie Beth, or some abomination of a nickname like Sara Kate Potentate, but "Katie" was mostly just Mom.
• A song she would sing when I was little was an old World War I song about a brave soldier with a stutter who wanted to marry his girl Katy before he went to France.
  K-K-K-Katie, beautiful Katie,
  you’re the only G-G-G-Girl that I adore,
  when the M-M-M-Moon shines over the cowshed,
  I’ll be waiting at your K-K-K-Kitchen door.
• Obviously as a very small child I had no idea that the verses of that song had lyrics like He thought he’d like to take a chance, see if he could make the Kaiser dance. It was just a silly little song that only Mom sang, only for me.
• I stop to chat with a couple my age about this section of the trail, how there was a barred owl that used to hang out on the creekside between here and Prosperity Drive, when a cyclist blows past us with no warning hail and inches to spare, despite there being plenty of room between us if he would make any effort at all to alter his straight line course. As I have dreamed of doing, this woman is sprinting after him, screaming “PEDESTRIANS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY ON THE CROSS COUNTY TRAIL AND YOU KNOW IT THERE IS A SIGN RIGHT THERE!!” she says pointing at the sign, while her husband holding their dog, a family with a double stroller, and I all cheer her on.
• I don't wish to engage in hyperbole but solo male cyclists in their 40s are the worst people in the world.
• Gnatcatchers are climbing the charts with me. Look at this silly guy.

• I think this section of the trail has to fall off the summer rotation. I still stop be because it's convenient to my sister's place and the Aldi, but it's just too busy and leafy and verdant to see birds in the summertime.
• I wish Mom knew I finally quit smoking.

BOTD: the yellow-rumped warbler, mostly because it was the only warbler I actually saw, even though I heard two more different songs.

If you are a mom, I hope they spoiled you rotten and you had a fabulous day. If today was rough for you, as it was for me, like it hasn't been for years, I get it, and I hope you are gentle with yourself about it.

Tip of the hat to the shrieking lady, "IT SAYS RIGHT THERE, BIKE YIELDS TO HIKER" who did not so much as crack a smile when I said, "And we all yield to horse."