October 2, 2026
Where: Up to the brushy hedgerow! Like a city block and a half!
When: 5:35 pm
Bird Species: gray catbird, downy woodpecker, house sparrow, mourning dove, house finch, red-bellied woodpecker
Things I Thought About:
- Walking boots are made for walking. I've been too whiny this week. The stairs are fatiguing, but there's no reason I can't stroll up to the road and back.
- This has been a busy and annoying work week and I am glad it is over. I am going to take the dreadful niece to see Resident Evil tonight to celebrate.
- This tree has started turning its beautiful autumn orange in the days I've been inside.
- I can hear two wrens singing to each other on the other side of a neighbor's fence, feet away. This must be what it feels like to be a ghost.
- One can walk in a walking boot, little baby steps, on the sidewalk, but something one cannot do is turn on a dime to follow the path of a catbird. He is going to have to show himself to me.
- The birds are repaying my devotion and drive by staying miles overhead and chuckling at my hobbling gait.
- I maneuver over a little rocky path to try to get a better look at the finches snacking in this tree and I feel immediately very unstable on my foot. I feel like I made a narrow escape, to only have a little burn in my heel that I can ice. Nothing happened, but something could have, which makes me feel reckless and dumb. Not exactly an unfamiliar feeling, but not a recent or sober one.
- Zach Cregger said in a panel that it was important to him that no one in Resident Evil was hot with the lead actor sitting right next to him. That is very funny to me.
BOTD: house finches. All the berry photos were dark and bad. The featured one is the one I endangered my tendon to get; it is well let and blurry. Worth it? Absolutely probably not.
It was nice to see them, though. A neighbor asked what I was looking at and I said "a handful of finches" before I recalled that a group of finches is called a "charm." They certainly charmed me.
