October 3, 2026

Where: balcony, my parking lot, and the trees across the street

When: 1:00 pm

Bird Species: gray catbird, downy woodpecker, house sparrow, mourning dove, house finch, red-bellied woodpecker

Things I Thought About:

• Resident Evil ripped. I highly recommend seeing a movie with jump scares with a Very Cool Teen.
• I have taken this identical photo two or three times before, a mockingbird on this exact branch, on the tree by my balcony. Today is the first time the background has looked like autumn.

• My apartment building is elderly, and not a bit ADA-friendly. Whereas most new build flights of stairs have 13 steps, this one has 14, meaning that each step is both a little bit shallower and a little bit steeper. I have to turn the boot sideways to descend comfortably, and today I am carrying the trash out, along with the camera bag and binos. The stairs are a pain in the ass, so I've been trying to only do it once or twice a day. Today it's trash out, go get groceries, pick up a prescription, go to the niece's volleyball game. In between, I want to try to get a decent photo of those blue jays I've been seeing all week.
• A big round bush in my complex has been completely taken over by house sparrows. They're diving in and out, gathering on top, popping their heads out, flapping a few inches away and resettling. It is incredibly noisy. Sparrows live in large flocks, and I mean large. To me, a large flock of finches might be 4-5, a large flock or bluebirds might be 8. With sparrows, you could have two dozen living in a bush, and a hundred in a hedge.

• I feel like there has been a lot of bird traffic lately on the far side of the street lately, and I see a section of fence down between two yards and think, "Ah, that's why." Then I remember that birds can fly.
• These birds are irritating me. There are a lot around right now, and they are not making allowances with my physical limitations at all. From the start with this newsletter I have always been clear that the best photo of the day would not always be the bird of the day, and that I never wanted the goal of getting a good photo to supersede the goal of looking at birds. I am now in the uneviable position of having to live my beliefs, because I am tired of posting mediocre photos, and photos from great distance.

• Additionally, I believe very strongly that one can love birds and become a birder at any level of physical fitness or age or ability, but I must confess that it is immensely frustrating to not be able to chase down a bird across the street when I could have done a month ago.
• The ankle is depressing me. There's nothing like humping down the stairs sideways, clutching the rail with one hand and a stuffed garbage bag in the other, with a heavy set of binos slapping you in tits with every step, to kind of make you wonder if this is going to be the whole rest of your life? Are more parts just going to slowly break down, and are more ordinary things going to get difficult, and have I already met everyone who could ever love me and want to be around to help with shit like this?
• Whoa, that last thought got a little out of control. Put a pin in that one, we'll circle back around to that late one Sunday night in the winter.
• Excited at the prospect of getting cleared to start PT again on Friday. I am the boss of this sack of bones; I need them to get in line.
• Did you know that they make Physical:100 for a bunch of different countries now? I have just discovered this. Hot body Italians are another species. They are not like any other variety of hot people.

BOTD: blue jay. There have been two around all week, harassing those noisy sparrows. They've been flying between our property and across the street. There are a lot a hawthorn and berry and pawpaw around here, and they are both flying around with their mouths full, lighting somewhere to hold it against a limb and crack it open with their beaks. They have been just out of a reasonable distance for a good photo, which means too far to catch up to right now. The Myth of Tantalus, except the bird has the fruit.