September 13, 2026

Where: Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge, MD

When: yesterday, 1:50 pm - 5:15 pm

Bird Species: house finch, red-winged blackbird, great egret, common gallinule (lifer), lesser yellowlegs, short-billed dowitcher, bald eagle, ring-billed gull, greater yellowlegs, bald eagle, great blue heron, mallard, solitary sandpiper

Things I Thought About:

• After the good wrap-up in the Hook yesterday, I flip a coin and rather than going straight home I head 95 miles over to Maryland to visit my favorite spot in that state. I own it, this was pretty dumb. It was going to be cloudy, and my hip does hurt when I spent too much time in the car, and this will fail my travel rule for time spent v. time getting there (I like to spend twice as long somewhere as I spend in transit, which this extra time will break.) But Blackwater is closer than home is, and once you're over the Bay Bridge you may as well do as much as you can before you have to trudge interminably home.
• When I first moved to the mid-Atlantic nine years (!) ago, it was difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that Delaware is corn country. Driving through Delaware is very similar to driving through Indiana, or any other farm country. You are passing tall stalks on one side, and short rows on the other, and if you need to pull over to fuck with your phone a minute you can look at the flatland in front of you, marked by squares of roads to huge wood-sided cottages, and know that one of them is going to be a church.
• Arriving at the refuge, my first stop is the visitor center where I purchase the nine dollar laminated folding resource that will change my life, Shorebirds of North America: A Comprehensive Guide to All Species. This will change everything.

• It was very quiet. I do not hear any small birds, at least any small birds that I cannot also see from my balcony. But I have these new binos, and it's startling how much better the cloudy day scenery looks.
• As I confessed, there was no effort involved in finding those sandhill cranes yesterday, so my heart really picked up when I saw a bird paddling around and munching in a little pond near an observation deck. I saw basically nothing at all from the observation deck, but walking back to my car, in this very small pond by the road, I can see something, buried in the reeds.

• I think you probably have to get into birds to get this, but there is just a feeling you get when you see a bird and you know in a moment you have never seen it before. This is not hedging with the field guide, this isn't "that could be a mallard, but it might be a wigeon." I saw just that tiny little glimpse and knew no matter what this bird was, it was going to be a life list for me. What a sensation. So exciting and full of potential. I am both zinging with glee, but also getting very calm and settling in to wait this guy out. Thrilling. This was maybe the highlight of the weekend, not the bird, but the sensation.
• Anyway, this little shit played hide and seek with me for 35 minutes. Cars pulled up, people got out and walked to the end of the observation deck, back to their cars, got in, and drove off, while this guy refused to leave those reeds. I'd sit in the driver's seat for a second, trying to look up possibilities on my phone, look up, see his full body, swear, try to get a focus through my filthy windshield, and he'd be gone.
• As we all know internet searches are now impossible. My clues are "shaped like a chicken but swimming, not a coot or a sora, brown with white blazes." This is a bird that, while not at all uncommon or rare, as it turns it, is one that I have never even heard of, so I just give up on trying to solve it from the car and concentrate on getting a good enough photo for an ID. It takes another 20 minutes.

• It was actually crazy to me that none of the people who stopped while I was parked there came over to ask "whatcha lookin' at?" Couldn't be me.
• Anyway, I finally feel like I might have enough to go on, throw the yoga mat I'd been kneeling on into the car, shut the doors, start the engine, throw it in reverse, check one more time, and he finally shows his smug little face. I took this with the engine running. Punkass swamp chicken.

• You can't make a feeling bird of the day, though. And that is, candidly, a pretty drab bird. So maybe this absolutely beautiful heron. This is bird that looks better under overcast skies than a full sun. This is a bird built for just staring at while he fishes.

• Wait, LMAO, no, BOTD has to be this eagle. They are such fucking dorks. America must know the truth.

BOTD: bald eagle. This place it lousy with them. I've seen at least three every time I come. The feature photo made me laugh really hard. They look so weird when you see them just, like, standing around. As though an early Mesopotamian artist carved him on a bowl and got the proportions just slightly off.

Their cries are very silly and undignified, and they eat out of dumpsters, and the juveniles look like absolute hell, but I will stipulate that the full-grown adults look pretty good, posted up high; a strong profile and at a distance where you can't see that they're filthy. Here are a few that were posted up yesterday

As you leave this park, near the end of the wildlife drive, there is a bald eagle nest that has been in continuous use, raising a family for generations of eagles. The rangers say this nest is at least 18 years old and has hatched at least 25 eggs.

It is massive. Unfortunately, that loblolly tree (the ranger told me) is dead and they're worried about how long it will be able to support that nest, which is estimated to weigh about two tons. I hope not soon. It always kind of feels like things are right in the world when you see an eagle on that nest as you drive out.

Can I say one more (admittedly wild) thing about eagles? It makes me crazy when the occasional meme comes around suggesting Sam the Eagle is MAGA. Sam the Eagle would be the biggest Never Trumper who ever lived, and if you don't get that you don't get the Muppets and I feel sorry for you.