September 18, 2026

Where: Wakefield Park

When: 4:25 pm

Bird Species: gray catbird, northern cardinal, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, blue-gray gnatcatcher, Carolina chickadee, American crow, ruby-throated hummingbird, northern flicker, eastern bluebird, American goldfinch, northern mockingbird, Carolina wren

Things I Thought About:

• Well, yesterday was certainly embarrassing, but it is Friday and we are back, baby.
• I am standing on a muddy little shoal that is under the stream for most of the year, but which today is low enough to allow me to pick my way up and down the edge of the creek and see clearly the birds on the other side of the water. When I look up and to my left, the sky is almost completely overcast. When I look up and to the right, the sky is a clear cerulean blue with little cotton ball remnants of today's clouds. The sunshine is headed this way.
• I was slipping for a minute, there, this week. I was forgetting that this is fun. There is a red-bellied woodpecker squawking on the other side of the creek, and I am going to find it in the binoculars and look at it, and that is fun.

• Oh, there's a gnatcatcher. I had indexed them as gone for the year. What a little treat.
• Do you remember six years ago when we were all sanitizing our hands like crazy? I don't know if this was common, but every now and then you'd sanitize your hands and then touch something vinyl or plastic or rubber, and it would just feel off? It's not like the plastic melted or anything, and it didn't make it feel sticky, precisely, just off. You wouldn't see any damage, but you could just tell that some reaction had happened.
• I hope that sounded at least familiar, because all I wanted to say is that it also happens with those mini-wipes of insect repellant. I just experienced it by wiping myself and then touching the buckle on my fanny pack, which English people call a bum bag, in case you did not know that. Much better name.
• Oh, a hummingbird! I lose him in the low sun almost immediately, but still a nice thing to see streaking by.
• The sun is dropping behind the trees at this, the shank of 6:27 pm. This is fine.
• Northern flicker! On the ground even! Got you!

• Fall sports are in full swing, and every county park I have visited since school started has featured absolute scenes. Tonight the sounds of a coach float to me from the soccer pitch. "Dylan. Dylan! Dylan! What are you doing? Dylan! Get after the ball! Go after it! Dylan! DYLAN!"
• A teenage couple is walking past me and the boy conversationally say "Get your shit together, Dylan." They both crack up, and they have their fingers hooked though each other's belt loops. Loving all of this for them.
• There was some YA book I read when I was in high school, although I don't think they really marketed books like that yet, some Judy Blume or Paula Danziger or somebody, who referenced couples walking together with their hands in each other's back pockets. Surely that never happened.
• This walk did exactly what it was supposed to do. And it always does, when I have the time to do it. It is the commute into the district that is killing me, it robs me of two hours of personal daylight when I have to do it and I believe that is making me very depressed. Plus, downtown is bad vibes all the time, and the new job has been not what I expected in a couple of pretty important ways. It is all combining to make me feel tense and fretful half the week, and that is why today I quit with nothing else lined up, to spend more time with birds.
• Just kidding. Of course, I am just kidding. But wouldn't that be something?
• Please sit down and stop cheering.
• Sun is behind the trees now which means it is time to redeem my points for a free sub at Jersey Mike's and watch something very stupid on television. Hell yeah, it is the weekend, baby.

BOTD: the American goldfinch. So the thing is, I have made this dumb error with my camera before, and what mostly happens is the photos go very yellow, and at any distance at all the focus is hopeless.

It's a good thing that I happened upon this little collection of goldfinches noshing. When I downloaded the pics this evening, they were the only photos worth a damn. I took a lot of photos, too. There was more variety than I've seen since I got back from Delaware. Long week!

It's honestly kind of an interesting effect, isn't it? They were quite close, and they are already yellow. Lucky break.