Happy Friday the 13th, everybody. I’m going into the day with 111 bird species on my Life List.

I have a daily desire to flop into a snowbank now, but there’s no snow to be found. I’m not built for the heat. I’m built for the cold and darkness.

After thirty days of birding, I’ve now gotten 106 species added to my Life List.

I really wish it was September/October.

The storms have been so bad this year and I’m so tired of it, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon.

Apparently Litten is a surname. I just discovered that. Imagine sharing your name with a Pokémon.

This might be crazy, but I’m attempting another hunt right now. My first Emera Pokémon hunt. Here’s hoping I don’t have to abandon it like my first Sandygast hunt.

Shiny Sandygast! The second attempt was not a failure :)

It’s really disappointing when I manage to record a unique bird call/song loud and clear but can’t identify it even though it really seems like I should be able to. I probably need to become more tech-savvy and figure out how to upload them somewhere.

“Your PokéRadar recorded the 40th Sandygast in a row! You have now reached the maximum chance of finding a shiny. Good luck!”

Don’t have any more eggs to hatch right now, though.

I just thought I got a great video of an eastern bluebird, but then I noticed that it wasn’t recording even though I’d pressed the record button, because my phone is trash and the touchscreen has to basically be bludgeoned to recognize any touch. And *twice* before that, when I was trying to zoom in to the bluebird, it crashed and stopped recording. So I ended up only getting one one-second recording and one six-second recording of it, instead of the minute-and-a-half recording I should’ve gotten which would’ve included it flying away and much more complex vocals.

Sadly, the blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) population has been decreasing by about 1% per year for decades, and now it’s only about half of what it was in the 20th century. So, the hateful lies that people spread about them and their few defenders have real consequences, and they might go extinct during this century. And how will humans breathe with the acorn-planters dead and gone and even more trees chopped down and burnt? Never mind how the innocent blue jays that do no harm to anyone will also suffer from the way people treat them while they’re still here.

I’ve seen more people spreading hateful lies about blue jays and encouraging people to starve them and bullying people who dare to like these beautiful birds that plant thousands of oak trees every year, are so beneficial and are maligned for no good reason. And I’m actually crying about it right now. Humans are so stupid and awful.

“Total hatched: 27
Current Shiny Chance: 0.102 %”

Just got my 25th Sandygast egg in this chain. Hopefully this second hunt will be successful.

My purple martins seem to be singing a lot later in the day than they used to.

Three new additions on day 21 of birding:

Acadian flycatcher, brown thrasher, and hooded warbler.

So, after three weeks of birding, I’m up to a total of 84 species.

Since I finished my birds-only playthrough of X, I’ve been planning on starting a musteloids-only one. I think I’d have seven options in that playthrough:

Zigzagoon (“Tiny Raccoon Pokémon”), Sentret (ferret), Zangoose (“Cat Ferret Pokémon”), Mienfoo (ermine?), Stunky (“Skunk Pokémon”), Floatzel (“Sea Weasel Pokémon”), and Sneasel (weasel).

One new bird on the twentieth day of birding: Bank swallow.

Three new additions on day nineteen of birding:

Chimney swift, Carolina wren, and blue-gray gnatcatcher.

The blue-gray gnatcatcher is one I’d been hoping to get.