October 6, 2026 - Anna Andersen, Guest Birder

Anna and I have been mutuals on the socials for quite some time now, dating back to when Twitter was fun and good. She offered to send in a guest post, and I jumped at it. Earlier this evening I parked my car at Eakin and watched four yellow-rumped warblers larking around in a tree, and it was such a relief to know I didn't have to run right home after pub quiz and write them up. Many thanks, and welcome Anna...

I got into birding because of my cats. I have four of them, and since we've moved into this house nine years ago, they've loved to sit or crouch on the back of the sofa and look out the big picture window onto the porch and into the yard. I spend a lot of time on that sofa myself, and so when a cat would suddenly get interested in something outside, or make that weird little chittery noise cats make when they watch birds, I'd look at what they were looking at. As I recall, I put a bird feeder and a concrete birdbath out there “for the cats,” but the more I watched the birds with them, the more I became interested in the birds for their own sake, and the more I watched them, the more I learned about them—I didn't even know the American robin was a songbird!

By now, the yard is good habitat not just for birds, but all the wildlife that lives in semi-suburban Kansas: squirrels, rabbits, possums, and raccoons (I even saw a coyote once, loping down the street; I think a few of them live in the cemetery a few blocks away). We let the grass grow tall, the leaf litter to stay on the ground all winter; the flowerbeds next to the porch are full of purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and other native plants that attract bees and butterflies when in bloom.

I'll sometimes go outside to track down a bird call the Merlin app is picking up—thanks to Sara's tip to look up when you hear chimney swifts, I recently watched a dozen of them swirl around the sky at dusk, and I'm going to track down that Carolina wren eventually! But mostly I'm a stationary birder, watching from my sofa like the cats, and I've been amazed how rewarding the hobby can be from a single perspective. I see the birds come and go with the seasons: the robins, grackles, and starlings are gone now, but the doves, finches, sparrows, cardinals and blue jays are still here, and the tiny, fat dark-eye juncos haven't yet arrived. I get to see fledglings of a half dozen species following their parents around and hollering for food; this year I chased a local cat away from a fledgling crow, which I thought was an adult grackle at first! A big, big baby.

Photo 2: All men cardinals in our yard are called Raymond “Red” Reddington; all lady cardinals are called Sonya.

3. These two fluffy mourning doves were caught off guard by a sudden cold snap.

4. This crow couple had a nest nearby this spring, possibly in our backyard. So fun to watch, so hard to photograph.

5. Speaking of hard to photograph, this sparrow throuple was close enough together on Sunday I tried to get a nice shot, but they refused to pose.

Anna is co-host of Your Favorite Bad Movie Podcast. Support on Patreon, or listen on Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts.) We are also pals on BlueSky, but I forgot to get permission to share the handle. You'll figure it out when I tag this entry there.

Want in on this? Guest Birder submissions at skwbotd@gmail.com.