October 14, 2026

Where: Smithsonian Castle Gardens

When: 4:50 pm

Bird Species: northern mockingbird, rock pigeon, northern cardinal, European starling, blue jay, American robin, common grackle

Things I Thought About:

• It is 82 goddamn degrees. I walked over here after work and the minute I stopped walking I was in a full body sweat, as if it was July.  I thought we had put this nonsense behind us, but some of us don’t know how to let go. Grow up, summer. Your time is past. 
• They are planting at the garden tonight, putting in a ton of fall flowers in great patches. They’ve carried away a lot of the tall exotics that were lining the alley all summer, but it still smells delicious back there.
• A tremendous murmuration of starlings is trying to get started across the street on the Mall. It is really something to see in those numbers.
• I have been coming by these gardens, directly behind the Smithsonian Castle, for months now, and today it struck me that even though it is street level behind the building, what it actually is is a rooftop garden. I have been looking at these low, interesting structures decorating the space between plots, and suddenly, today, it occurred to me that there is a great sprawling complex of museum rooms and storage below it all, and these low structures are skylights.
• Now I think of the whole thing differently, it’s even more lovely to consider that every plant would have been selected with that in mind, a secure root that wouldn’t sprawl, insulation for the collections below, items that can live in planters versus beds that would need to be fully turned. How carefully they must calibrate the water features, which, to be fair, are very rarely operating. A nice little spot.
• What a difference a bit of perspective makes. I blew a teenager’s mind the other day when I said that the swallows were flying south for the winter, but we are the south that the ducks fly to in the winter. The objective facts remain the same, but how you look at it can flip the whole picture.
• Speaking of the world turning on its end, the drinks date was good. We are still talking. Stop asking.
• There is a photo shoot happening with a girl in an insanely beautiful, emerald green quinceañera dress. I yell, “That is an insanely beautiful dress,” because my own girlfriends have brought home to me recently how important it is to gas each other up when the opportunity presents itself. She looks mildly terrified, though. Might should be reserved for close friends.

BOTD: northern mockingbird. I was talking to a security guard about how this is the only place near my office to see birds, and he asked what birds I see here, and I said mostly mockingbirds, every time I come here, and right as I said it, two flew across and landed within feet of us. It was wildly gratifying.

I have discovered that most mockingbirds only pair seasonally, but they can also bond over a territory for multiple seasons, so it seems likely that I'm not joking when I say there is a pair that really does run the place.