May 31, 2026

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 6:00 am

Bird Species: titmouse, northern cardinal, brown-headed cowbird, mourning dove, American robin, prothonotary warbler, blue-gray gnatcatcher, eastern kingbird, European starling, common grackle, red-winged blackbird, ruby-throated hummingbird, green heron, great egret, osprey, barn swallow, great blue heron, indigo bunting, common yellowthroat, wood duck

Things I Thought About:

• My iPhone talk to text has turned "titmouse" into "Deadmau5" complete with the numeral 5. I don't know why this makes me so annoyed. Maybe because I've never said Deadmau5 aloud in my life, and in my head, I always hear it as
  "Dead Mao Five." How can it possibly confuse those two words.
• Do cardinals wake up earlier than other birds? Or are they always the first ones I see just because they're bigger and bright red. I hear a lot of birds at the moment (including some brown-headed cowbirds, which sound crazier than you would think) but the first bird I see in the mornings is very often a cardinal.
• It's a little odd to me that I've never seen a bear, except from my car while driving. I have spent quite a lot of time in the woods in black bear country. I've eaten bear. But I've never encountered one just out and about. I'm sure they're around. I don't carry bear spray around Fairfax County as a rule, but I do when I go west towards Shenandoah and cavern country. I'd never want to see a grizzly, but if I had my bear spray I bet it would be very, very cool to see a black bear.
• Two dives, two hits. The ospreys are crushing it this morning.

• I am the worst kind of sick, sick for sure, but not sick enough for a doctor, just sitting at home being an at-home chemist. Can I take Mucinex with Sudafed? Liquid DayQuil doesn't feel like real medicine, but DayQuil caplets do. Does this throat lozenge somehow have acetaminophen in it?
• I drank so hard for so many years I suspect parts of my liver look like a dry loofah; I live in fear of the one dose of acetaminophen that will push me over the edge into liver failure. I'd never take Tylenol as a painkiller, but it seems like the only thing they use in cold medicines.
• When I got COVID in 2021 the doctor, a medical professional, said to take zinc with my OTCs and now whenever I get even a little sick, I take zinc of some kind. I know nothing about zinc. I assume I can just throw it on top of whatever else. Except the label says no citrus?? So can I not take my AirBorne, a bullshit patent-medicine snake-oil placebo-effect sham of a product that I swear by and that makes me feel better every time?
• I like getting here for breakfast. Everybody is fishing. I watched a great blue for almost fifteen minutes but he didn't make a grab, but the green heron behind him ate three fish in like five minutes.

• Someone told me once that you can get rid of a cold in seven days if you baby it, but if you just let it run its course it will stay around for a whole week. This is why I continue to insist that the best way to treat a cold is with honey tea and denial. Unless you're sick enough for an antibiotic, it's all tinkering.
• Placebo effect works, is the thing.
• I spent a long time looking for the woodpecker that was making all the racket. It was tough to find because it was at the base of the tree kind of hidden in the bushes. Also, there were two of them.

• What if I have a big diner breakfast? Feed a cold, starve a fever, and all that.
• What if I go straight home and back to bed?

BOTD: Prothonotary warbler.

Despite my well-known dislike of research, the first time I saw one I did go down the rabbit hole of "why are they called that?" Turns out early European settlers called them that as nickname, because their yellow looked like the yellow robes that papal clerks called prothonotaries wore. I read that in ten places. But surely in the Roman Catholic church of the 1700s, titles would not have been in English? The commonwealth of Pennsylvania currently has a prothonotary officer. I don't think they wear yellow, and I don't know why they aren't just a Clerk of Court. It's all very confusing. Never look anything up, that's my motto.

This is a very unique warbler. The are usually the first to get to a breeding ground, and they will fly 1500 miles nonstop, across the Gulf of Mexico from South America to get here. Their shade of yellow is shockingly bright, and when I first spotted him in the low morning sun he looked like a ripe orange.

Since I did accidentally learn some things about them, I will share the coolest fact about them, which is that they have regional dialects. Texas and midwest prothonotaries sing faster with shorter intervals than these southeastern ones, which I guess have a drawl.

His bill looks like when you crank up the lead in a mechanical pencil, and his little black eye looks like you drew it on with the same pencil. This is a really cute little bird.

I did get diner breakfast, and a pedicure to boot. Then I slept on the couch for almost five hours. Feed a cold, starve a fever, pamper a big sick baby, I always say.