May 13, 2026

Where: Hidden Oaks Nature Center

When: 5:50 pm

Bird Species: Carolina chickadee, house finch, eastern towhee, northern cardinal, American crow, white-breasted nuthatch

Things I Thought About:

• This tree has two chickadees in it, and it sounds like it could be thirty. They have that buzzy little call, and I regret to say that when there is more than one or two of them around the noise can sound insectile.

• It is grey and drizzling, but I don't want to go home yet. I like walking outside when it's like this. I feel like I'm racing the rain, to get a nice little stroll in before it starts raining too hard for the camera.
• The Art of Racing in the Rain is a book I think I actually owned, and never read, even though it was everywhere for a while a dozen years ago. I struggle with books narrated by animals. Animals aren't like us. When I saw the trailer for the movie I laughed out loud, though. No actor has ever sounded less like a dog to me than Kevin Costner.
• I read "petrichor" in a book to describe the smell after a dreary rain on a dreary day, but I don't think that's right? I thought it was specifically about the smell of rain steaming off the dry ground on hot days. I associate that word with asphalt. It's a completely different smell.
• Not that I can smell anything about this rain. I am definitely getting a summer cold, but I shall fight it with NyQuil and denial.
• The light has been very challenging this evening, gray in the rain, dark in the shade, and now weird patches of much brighter light as the sun is struggling to come out. I have been experimenting with the manual settings again, and I bet every photo is going to look like shit (note later: correct.)
• What on Earth, Merlin? I have seen like three birds.

• We need a different word for the smell after a wet, cool rain. Also we need a different word for cannibalism. Cannibalism, in my opinion, suggests intention. There has to be some green-friendly term for situations where everybody is in trouble, and it would be stupid to let a dead body go to waste.
• It's very crazy that great white shark can take off a whole human leg with one bite. Legs are very large.
• Am I just hungry?

BOTD: the northern cardinal. This bird was being madly elusive tonight. I failed to find this cardinal several times, and felt neither "tip of the hat, sir" nor "oh, I hate you," but a secret, third thing, which is "Oh, my god, is this a prank??" It is ridiculous to not be able to find a cardinal. They are 1) loud, 2) bold, and 3) bright red. Turns out he was about six feet higher than he sounded.

I was playing with the setting for "Aperture priority" for low light, and those pics are all a mess. Every shot tonight either had the weird glowing monster eyes in the flash (I very fancily blacked his eye out with the Windows photo editor pen here,) or were hopelessly fuzzy in the ones I overexposed. I didn't save a single photo. I am not good at photography! It was a lovely walk, though.

Consider this public post my permission to eat my dead body as needed to survive (please do not kill me for my meat, though. That's cannibalism.)