#bird noticing

[door]

a thing nobody tells you until you start bird noticing in earnest is that there are SO many little yellow guys out there. just sittin in trees

[lucybellwood]

how to do nothing – Jenny Odell – Medium

This is a version of a keynote I gave at EYEO 2017 in Minneapolis.

This is a long read, but I strongly recommend you take the time to meander through it. Jenny touches on so, so many things that have been on my mind over the past year. There’s a lot of richness (and wonderful Bird Antics) in this essay.

[door]

cooper's hawk in a tree on my walk to work. relatedly was late to work

[athelas-starter-kit]

Birds I saw today

Red-Tailed Hawk (perched on a telephone pole near the highway as I was driving)

Goldfinch

Flicker

Turkey Vulture (flying high overhead)

while I was doing yardwork at my mother's house.

[athelas-starter-kit]

So many birds!

List of birds today, mostly on the tree in the side yard:

Western Bluebird (3 of them!)

Nuthatch

Cedar Waxwing

Grosbeak

Chickadee

House Finch

Downy Woodpecker

Lewis Woodpecker

Scrub Jay

Magpie

Crow

Eurasian Collared Dove

Landlady probably wouldn't let me put up a bird feeder, though. She generally doesn't like wild creatures coming near the house. They come here anyway. Part of what makes this a good neighborhood for birds is that there are a variety of old-ish trees, including a few dead trees with the branches cut off for safety but the main trunk remaining intact. This provides little homes for insects in the wood, so there are plenty of things for birds to eat, and places for cavity-nesting birds to live. The neighborhood was built in 1953 so many of the trees are around 70 years old.