
Going to call it early on day four of birding because I’ve already
gotten more added to the list today than yesterday. Nine of them
this time:
Cooper’s hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo, eastern wood-pewee, least
flycatcher, cedar waxwing, northern house wren, Louisiana
waterthrush, yellow-rumped warbler, and red-winged blackbird.

Only eight additions on day three of birding, but I’m pleased with
them:
Canada goose, red-shouldered hawk, barred owl, eastern
whip-poor-will, purple martin, barn swallow (aka Taillow), hairy
woodpecker, and blue grosbeak.

Day two of birding has concluded, and it brought almost as many new
bird IDs as the first. The app I use has some problems, but I’m
learning to work around them and I think I’ve gotten better at
confirming IDs. My bird list is up to 29 now, with 14 new
additions:
Red-bellied woodpecker, great crested flycatcher, eastern kingbird,
gray catbird, eastern bluebird, Swainson’s thrush, white-breasted
nuthatch, warbling vireo, Nashville warbler, chipping sparrow,
field sparrow, American goldfinch, indigo bunting, and common
grackle.

I officially started birding today. And, on my first day, I was
able to log 15 species, being careful to only log the ones I felt
sure about the identification of:
Wild turkey, mourning dove, broad-winged hawk, chuck-will’s-widow,
blue jay (my favorite bird), American crow, eastern phoebe (nesting
on my house), Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, red-eyed vireo,
orange-crowned warbler, house finch, summer tanager, northern
cardinal, and eastern meadowlark.
The turkey, mourning dove, chuck-will’s-widow, blue jay, and crow
have very distinctive sounds, but the other ten species are much
more generic-sounding and therefore harder to verify (even though
the northern cardinal would not stop singing the same thing it woke
me up with all day long). And the weird thing is that, I guess,
focusing so hard on it trying to identify it has caused me to keep
hearing birdsong even though I know it stopped a long time ago...
So that’s kind of worrying, but I still want to do it again
tomorrow.

My favorite birds from different continents:
- The blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) of North America,
- the hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) of South
America,
- the Eurasian blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) of Europe (fun fact:
this bird was the inspiration for Rookidee),
- the shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) of Africa,
- and the Indian peacock (male Pavo cristatus) of Africa (fyi: the
female of the species is referred to as a peahen and the word for
the males and females together is peafowl).

There are three Purrloin eggs lined up in the lab right now.
Imagine if all four eggs were Purrloin.

I love blue jays with all of my heart. People constantly say things
about them that aren’t true and are very misleading, and I just
want to say that that’s very wrong. I’ve lived with them all my
life but have come to appreciate them a lot more recently after
learning more about them, and I’ve also recently learned about how
badly people have treated them and continue to treat them and have
been very upset by that.

I’m crazy about ermines, long-tailed weasels, and least weasels.
The algorithm is showing me so many photos and videos of them in
their winter coats flying through the snow, and I’m very happy
about it.

I have a headache because I was just unfortunate enough to witness
someone who gets paid to play Pokémon pitting an Absol against a
Scraggy and using Bite on it instead of Slash MULTIPLE TIMES.

I guess every time there’s going to be one Gimmighoul I can’t find.

So I guess I’m just living with some creepy glowing eyes in the
forest staring at me every night now. Not even joking. They look
like stars in the forest, but two of them right next to each other
so they look like some monster’s eyes. My father thought they were
some animal’s eyes even though I told him that they haven’t moved
at all (but can only be seen when it’s dark out). No idea what it
is that’s giving off light or reflecting it.

This last egg I needed for the research took so long to find. And I
feel like it’s taking as long as possible to hatch, too.

I’m really tired of being told that I don’t speak my language
properly because I’m part of a diaspora population when the people
saying that in fact speak in a way that’s much further away from
the original pronunciation than my speech is. Sometimes people who
moved away from their motherland maintained traditions better than
those who stayed behind. Maybe because being in a strange place and
feeling homesick made them hold on to what they knew more tightly.
I don’t see why that’s so hard for people to understand. The fact
that a language was named for a certain place over a thousand years
ago does NOT mean that the people currently inhabiting that place
speak the language any better than anyone else.

I think I can pretend to like warm weather until May is over, but
then I’ll really need to skip over June, July, and August and get
ready to enjoy spooky season.

When is the Cornlet line finally going to be added to the Pokédex?

23rd attempt failed, too. I’m done. Spending a bunch of money on
the fair games that never work correctly but are differing degrees
of broken each time they’re played, and having to check in
constantly to see when they’re recharged and keep trying over and
over again but getting absolutely nothing in return, definitely
makes the fun fair my least favorite event.

I’ve gotten 22 of the fun fair Pokémon that are supposed to have a
5% shiny chance, but no shiny.

I’ve been cursed by Brock. The last three Pokémon I’ve hatched have
been an Onix, a Geodude, and another Onix.

Just had a fun time soloing the Fighting-type Gym Leader in the
monotype Dark Nuzlocke with Sableye, lol. Only one of Korrina’s
three Pokémon (her Machoke) had a move that could hit Sableye (Rock
Tomb), but she opened with Mienfoo and tried using Fake Out twice
before accepting it wouldn’t work and switching to the Machoke,
while I was setting Sableye up with X Attacks just because I
could... Took no damage, of course.

Well, my chain’s gonna break. Failed to get the shiny Sandygast. I
guess maybe I’ll try again in two months.