November 9, 2026

Where: Chincoteague Island NWR

When: 7 am - 1:30 pm, 2:30pm - 5:25 pm

Bird Species: northern cardinal, dark-eyed junco, yellow-rumped warbler, blue jay, mourning dove, song sparrow, white ibis, red-bellied woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, white-throated sparrow, swamp sparrow, northern flicker, American robin, black vulture. turkey vulture, mallard, European starling, bald eagle, great egret, great blue heron, black-crowned night heron (juv.), belted kingfisher, downy woodpecker, American crow, Canada goose, American black duck, kildeer, snowy egret, sanderling, ring-billed gull, double-crested cormorant, lesser yellowlegs

Things I Thought About:

• It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful 7:15 am this.
• When I think about this place, the word that comes most immediately to mind is abundance. I truly have never seen more yellow-rumped warblers at one outing in my life. A blue jay flew into a pine top screaming, and five exploded out. Wherever I look, I see life. It’s sunny and breezy and, as can sometime happen, I am suddenly suffused with the most extravagant sense of well-being. It makes me want to skip, it makes me want to stretch. 
• It makes me want to take off at least two layers. I am baking like a meatloaf and it is not yet 8:30 am.

• So, I dislike squirrels, this is canon, this is known. The black squirrels we get in the DC area are not merely not-cute to me, they are repellant. They look like if you petted one (gag) your hands would come away looking like the soles of a little kid’s feet when they used to run around barefoot all summer long in the 80s. Grocery store feet. That’s what a black squirrel looks like.
• There is a thing called a Delmarva fox squirrel, though, that I like kind of a lot. They only live on the peninsula, and they are silvery gray and big, muscular boys. The tail is very bushy and rolls high. They look almost as big as a housecat sometimes, certainly as long. They used to be endangered; I see one about every 200 feet on the woods trail.

• The smutty audiobook I have been listening to in the car just said she “felt her pelvic floor tighten up like shrink wrap on a doorknob” to which I can only say “what”
• Earlier in this book when he took off his shirt she saw “his sharp-cut triceps wink at her like they were sharing a secret.” It isn't, you know, good.

• why would someone one shrink wrap a doorknob
• Here comes a keen observation from me, a proficient birder: dark-eyed juncos and myrtle warblers are friends.
• Doubtless some picklepuss spoilsport will be saying, "Well, do you mean they subsist on the same diet and often flock together and share resources?" No, I mean they are friends. Their wives are quite close and the men ask how the kids are doing on their college applications in big, warm voices.

• I drove off the refuge for lunch and a woman sat near me, watching NFL highlight show. A man sat next to her, making small talk with us, meaning that as soon as she said she liked football, he started quizzing her. It's the wildest thing, the way this happens. I like baseball. I would never be able to answer questions about anyone other than my own team, but they doesn't mean I'm lying about liking baseball.
• I believe men when they say they like pussy without making them prove they know what fibroids are.
• Anyway, she knew everything about football. It was pretty gratifying to watch.

• After driving back on the only things I thought about for the next 90 minutes were birds and ponies. There were plenty of both.

• The sun is drifting low, very low. The quality of light is the way the light looks when you're dragging your blanket off the beach in the summertime at the end of a long vacation day, getting ready to go back to the rental and shower off the sand, maybe put on a sundress and go out for seafood dinner. That kind of light, except it's 3:40 pm and it makes me want to weep.
• The beach part is a good idea, though. I decide to just post up and watch the sanderlings chase and be chased by the tide until I'm in the dark.

BOTD: black-crowned night heron, a juvenile. This is a cool bird.

There are great egrets and great blue herons wading all over this refuge, but this guy was very striking and very unique. This was an interesting moment, because as I have described before, there is a little frisson you get when you are seeing a bird and know in an instant it's a brand-new bird for you. I had certainly never seen a heron that looked like this before, but I didn't get that feeling. It must have been familiar somewhere in my brain, because I didn't think "oh, this is a heron I've never seen," I just added "whatever heron his turns out to be" to my list.

It turned out to be a black-crowned night heron, and when he turned his body and gave me another angle, I knew that's why my brain tripped the "identified" switch. The coloring is completely off for the juvenile, both feathers and eye, but the shape is exactly the same as the only adult night-crowned heron I'd ever seen.

The photos don't really capture how striking the pale, almost minty yellow-green plumage around the lores and bill were, and his minty green feet. Really interesting coloring on this juvenile. A pretty nifty little guy to find just off the side of the road.

• What a great day. I walked 24,000 steps and my body hates me, but it was kind of worth it. I will do early morning beach and then the woods trail in the morning before heading back.