May 26, 2026

Where: Ranger Road Park

When: 5:46 pm

Bird Species: American bluebird, gnats

Things I Thought About:

• Every time I pull up to this car I see a very bright blue eastern bluebird fly to one specific tree, and before I have time to park and get out with my camera I've lost it. Today is no exception.
• This is a shame, because I have absolutely no time for a walk. No time to think, no time to chill out, no time to chase a bird. I need to take one photograph of a bird. and I see exactly zero.
• "Syncope" would be a beautiful name for a girl.
• Hey, that's a barred owl. And it's close.
• Where is that owl?

BOTD: not a barred owl.

So here's what happened: I had decided not to even take a photo and just take a zero day. I'm rushed, I have a headache, it's rained all week, I need to be at trivia eight minutes away in five minutes. I decide to swing by the park, just in case there's a bird handy. I see that damn bluebird, and then nothing. No robins, no cardinals, just bugs.

Then I hear a barred owl. Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? Unmistakable, and close. On the other side of the road from the park, there is a row of townhouses, and this owl is somewhere behind them in the trees. Even though I planned to do no walking at all, I walk over, because it's still doing that odd, rooster-ish call they do, six times, it does it. I can't find him. I can't go around to the back yard of these townhouses, and I don't see him in the treetops over the top of the building. It's too dark, I left my binos in the car, and now the owl has stopped singing.

Then a man, not a park walker, obviously not a bird watcher, just a man in a jacket, on the phone, watching his kid scramble into his car, says "Are you looking for the owl? There he is. That‘s his spot, right there," and pointed. And with the wide-open heart of a child, I believed him, because he lives there. The shape was right, the distance to the sound was right, and it was really lovely of him to take the time to do that.

So I took the photo, and came home after trivia and downloaded, and edited to brighten up the gray, and zoomed around, and its pinecones.

All is pinecones. Everything even vaguely owl-shaped is pinecones.

As I was walking down the stair I met an owl that wasn't there

I did not take any other photos today. I didn't see any other birds today except one pigeon downtown, and parking lot sparrows at trivia.

I blew it.

Here is a photo of a barred owl I took months and months and MONTHS ago:

Excelsior. I'll get one tomorrow (a bird, probably not an owl.)