mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

The other week we had a bunch of above-freezing days and made quite a bit of headway in melting the snow. There were even places where you could see the ground! At one point I was out walking and I wasn't even wearing a coat, and some guy walking past me who was certainly old enough to know better opened his arms expansively and announced in glee, "It's finally here!!" I just smiled and didn't disillusion him.

Shortly afterward, the temperatures plummeted back down to the teens Fahrenheit (single digits below zero C) and stayed there, and yesterday we got several inches of snow, so the ground is well covered again.

The birds, however, are certainly aware that winter will end eventually, and are continuing their preparations. The year-round residents are doing more singing and less quiet foraging, and the early migrators are starting to roll in. I've heard flocks of Canada Geese honking over the neighborhood and seen Turkey Vultures wheeling and teetering through the sky. (In the dead of winter we only see Black Vultures, which can find carrion by sight; Turkey Vultures need to smell it, so below-freezing temperatures are a problem for them.) Walking around town I saw the Common Grackles are back, and I heard the year's first Red-winged Blackbird call from the muddy fields near the grocery store. I spotted a Song Sparrow quietly hanging out with our usual Dark-eyed Junco group in the yard (looking a bit underdressed in his casual stripes next to the juncos' tuxedos), and the next day he was singing.

A lot of people associate American Robins with spring, but not all individuals migrate. Even in the coldest part of the winter I still see them occasionally out in the woods. But the ones who do migrate are definitely on their way in, and before it started snowing again there were even enough open lawns in the neighborhood for them to forage there. I always find it funny how they spread out equally spaced when they forage, almost in a grid.

Since my last bird update I also added Pine Siskin and European Starling to my year list. They've been around, I just hadn't seen them since New Year. Pine Siskins should actually be heading out soon, as they breed further north, in Canada. I love their buzzy little upward zipper call.

So that's 46 birds for my 2026 list so far. Soon the main migration wave will hit and it'll fill up faster!

While cleaning up the kitchen drawers today, I found several dozen disposable ball-point pens, about half of which actually still worked. This is the norm around here -- no matter how many pens I cull, more always appear. I do not think I have ever bought a ball-point pen in my entire life, and I don't think anyone else who lives here buys them either, yet we always have way too many. Where do they come from? I don't know!

I shared this with sdk (our conversations are always this riveting, I assure you) and she said she has the opposite problem: Her pens always disappear.

Now, disappearing pens is a problem I have also faced, though only in professional contexts. I used to work in retail, where customers love nothing more than to walk away with pens after signing credit card slips. This is why stores glue things like koosh balls and those weird rubbery finger puppets to their pens, though even that isn't always enough to deter people. (One store in my town actually ties their cash register pens to helium balloons, which is a level of commitment that I deeply admire.) At one chain I worked for, the guy who was in charge of ordering supplies was always infuriated at how often our location asked for more pens, and at one point he sent us a box of them on which he had angrily scrawled MAKE THESE LAST in Sharpie, which a) felt more threatening than you'd think, and b) made me envy the life of a man who could actually find a Sharpie at work when he wanted one.

If I, as a customer, have ever walked away from a store with their pen, may lightning strike me. But all these pens in my house are coming from somewhere. Are they quantum-tunneling over from sdk's house? Is that how this works, every time someone loses a pen, someone else finds one? Does it eventually all even out? Help me understand.

The young woman in the striped hoodie stared into the dairy case in despair. "Why is 1% yellow?" she half-yelled. "Why does milk have to be such a pain in the ass?!" She gave the apparently unconcerned toddler in the shopping cart an agonized look. "We need to get out of here and go back to Connecticut."