A change in the weather

The weather has been much better lately; much better meaning “not freezing cold.” That’s the bar for weather, and everything else, in 2021. It’s pretty low. I still walk outside when it’s really cold but I tend not to notice my surroundings. I bundle up in as much clothing as will allow me to still move my arms and legs, and I plug in my headphones, and I concentrate on whatever I’m listening to, and on putting one foot in front of the other until I can stop walking and go back inside where I belong in the winter. Yes, it’s that bad. 

But when the weather’s nice, I keep my head up and my eyes open and my wits about me, such as they are, and I notice stuff. I notice the very beginnings of spring starting to poke out here and there. I notice odd details. A few days ago, I walked a different route than normal, and I walked past a house that had bird feeders hanging from every available tree branch. I stopped to count, and I stopped at 19. 19 bird feeders. Interestingly, I also counted zero birds, so I guess that the bird feeders were empty. Maybe the homeowner hasn’t gotten around to buying birdseed yet. Or maybe they’re just there for show. Bird feeders are very decorative. Bird crap, however, is not. 

*****

I passed one of my favorite houses, the site of the suburban encampment about which I wrote in some detail last year. I was hoping to see something interesting, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were political cartoons posted on the fence, and a glass or crystal bird perched on top of a fence post. I don’t know why it was there. It looked pretty, but a stiff wind (or a real bird, for that matter) could easily knock it from its perch and break it into a thousand pieces. I should have taken a picture, because the bird’s owner will probably come to the same conclusion and remove it from the fence post. Anyway, I’ll be watching this house with considerable interest as the weather continues to improve. 

I walked past it again, and took a picture. 

*****

In other bird news, the crows returned! Not to my front yard, but they’re in the neighborhood and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. I was walking again, on the day after I saw the bird feeders and the crystal bird, and I walked straight into a swirling, shrieking murder of crows. It was Friday, 5:15 or so, and the crows appeared to be having a very good time. It was crow happy hour, and I wanted no part of it. I zipped up my jacket, tightened my hood, picked up my pace, and got the hell out of there. Crows. Ick. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, rainy and cool, but not freezing cold. Saturday was a beautiful day, clear and sunny and almost warm. Not quite warm, but almost. We ran errands and got sushi and checked on my husband’s mother, who had just gotten her first COVID shot on Friday. And things seemed different. People were out, walking and running and stroller-pushing, and it felt like a holiday. 

We came home and watched the Capitals beat the New Jersey Devils and we talked about how we might get to watch our team in person in the not-too-distant future. This isn’t over but it feels like we might have turned a corner; like we might return to something like normal life. 

Later, I walked past the same corner where the crows had been partying on Friday afternoon, and there was nary a crow in sight. The party was over. Maybe that’s not the only thing that’s over. 

Of a feather

Do you know what I saw today? A hummingbird. It was the first time I’ve ever seen one so close to home. We have a neighborhood listserv, God help us; and although some people post stupid complaints about illegally parked vehicles or unsanctioned sheds or fences, others post nice things about events that are happening (back when events actually happened) and things to give away, and neighborhood wildlife, including hummingbirds. Apparently, hummingbirds began to appear in people’s backyards during this corona spring, and I finally got to see one myself. 

The hummingbird wasn’t in my backyard; it was in the side yard between my house and non-crazy neighbor’s house. As I mentioned, they have one particularly large bird feeder that attracts all manner of avian visitors, most of which I cannot identify. Of course, as I have also mentioned before, I can’t identify most birds, but I’m pretty sure that the ones I’ve been seeing in recent months are out of the ordinary for our corner of Maryland. I keep trying to get a picture here and there, but birds are notoriously camera shy. 

*****

So that was yesterday. Other than orioles, who are very common bird visitors, I haven’t seen any birds today. I’m always happy to see the orioles, though, so that’s good enough from a wildlife perspective. The orioles are not so much visitors as neighbors. They probably read the listserv. 

*****

I need to be nicer. I am still shopping for my eccentric old lady and I grow more impatient with her as the weeks go by. I’m sure, of course, that I don’t betray that impatience with her on the phone; at least, I try not to. But it might be audible. 

I’m not annoyed with the old lady so much as I’m annoyed at everything in general. 

Well, a few things are particular to the old lady. For example, I always call her on the same day at the same time. Could she possibly have her list ready, rather than making me wait for her to get it ready and then call me back? Could she not make me stop at the deli counter for fried chicken every week? And could she not use a hillbilly southern accent on the words “fried chicken”? Could she not remind me EVERY DAMN TIME that she wants NATURAL peanut butter? And could she stop asking me to buy ALL of the natural peanut butter they have? I’m not going to be a party to peanut butter hoarding. Times are hard, and other people need their peanut butter, too. 

And speaking of hoarding, what is with the bleach? Why am I buying huge jugs of bleach every damn week? Is she drinking it? Is she injecting it to ward off the ‘rona? Is she running a Magdalene laundry? WHY DOES SHE NEED SO MUCH FUCKING BLEACH?

But no, it’s not her. It’s me. It’s my desperately poor attitude toward what I have come to think of as house arrest, undeserved, unwarranted house arrest. 

*****

Don’t read this as a complaint about reasonable public health measures. I’ll wear a mask all day long, and I yield to no one in my commitment to social distancing. I hardly ever leave the house except to swim or buy fried chicken and bleach. But the powers that be need to get it together, agree on a plan, and make sure that the plan comes together so that we can get off this terrible treadmill. My always-tenuous grip on reason is becoming less secure by the day. Shit’s getting real. 

*****

The birds, however, are as happy as they always are; no more and no less. I suppose that’s why I like having my desk where it is. I can watch them as I work, marveling at their freedom. Of course, I wouldn’t want to live like a bird. Their freedom is predicated on ignorance. They are conscious only of their immediate surroundings and needs and although animals experience fear, they don’t suffer anxiety about the future; not in the way that we do, anyway. Some time in the not-too-distant future, I hope, normal life will resume and we’ll get to go out into the the world, which will be an interesting place again. And these birds that I’m watching now (at least five different kinds, no kidding) will die, and others just like them will take their places. Humans will die in that time, too, sadly, but no one will take their places because no one can. No two are alike. Even birds can’t claim that. 

Gateway

I read somewhere that Stalin once asked a political enemy (Lev Kamenev maybe, or one of the other old Bolsheviks) how much the state weighed. The person was apparently confused (probably head trauma) and asked Stalin what he meant (probably not a good idea), and Stalin apparently then asked him what the Kremlin and all of its furniture and finishings weighed, and how much all of the paper in the Soviet record archives weighed, and how much all of the gold and gypsum in the mines weighed, and how much all of the soldiers and tanks and planes in the Soviet army weighed, etc. And then how much all of it combined--how many pounds or kilos, did it all add up to? The idea was that the Soviet government apparatus was so huge and all-encompassing that no one person could oppose it. The sheer weight would crush him.

*****

A few weeks ago, I had to attend a tech symposium at the NIH main campus in Bethesda. The National Institutes of Health, with all of its many Institutes and Centers and its 300+ acre campus, and all of the employees and contractors who work there, is a small, very secure and insular little city unto itself. It's like the Vatican.

Even if you have a Federal government ID, you still have to go through security when you visit NIH. I knew this going in, so I was prepared. The NIH Gateway Center, where all visitors begin their day at NIH, is like customs and border patrol for the NIH city-state. Visitors enter through a glass door and step into the security screening area. After they pass through security, they are directed to one of 6 numbered windows, where uniformed clerks issue ID badges and send visitors on their way to whatever NIH building they're supposed to visit. It's all very efficient, and very busy. NIH hosts lots of visitors, and they all have to pass through the Gateway Center. 

*****
NIH, as large as it is, is just a small part of an even larger Cabinet-level agency. Which is itself just a small part of the Executive branch. Which is itself just a part of the vast apparatus of the United States Federal government. Add up all of those buildings and pencils and papers and computers, not to mention millions of people. It's a lot of weight.

****

As I said, I knew about the visitor rules, so I came prepared. I was about 10th in line when I arrived, and I spent my few minutes in line unzipping my handbag and wallet and pencil case, pulling change out of my pockets, and generally sorting and organizing my belongings for the screening. A group of visitors came in just behind me, and they all fell into line too. With 18 or 19 people waiting, a small group of three--two young men and a youngish woman--entered the Gateway Center and headed directly to the front of the line. 

"Good morning," said one of the young man, the leader of the trio, to the security guard. 

"Good morning, sir. The back of the line is right there," said the security guard, pointing helpfully to the back of the line where these three obviously belonged. 

The young man smiled, an I'm-sure-you-don't-know-whom-you're-speaking-to smile. "We're badged," he explained, waving the same PIV card that 80% of us standing in the line were already wearing around our necks.

"Yes," said the guard, "thank you very much. If any of you have NIH badges, you can head directly to the employee entrance on South Drive. If you don't have NIH badges, you can join the line, and we'll get to you just as quickly as possible." 

The young man's face fell, but he knew that he was beaten, and we knew that he knew. No one person, not even three people together, can bear all that weight. The three turned meekly around and got in line behind the four or five newcomers who had joined the line during this conversation. You can't fight city hall, and you really can't fight the NIH Gateway Center.

This is a birdhouse just outside the Natcher building at NIH.
Maybe I wasn't supposed to take pictures, but no one told me that I couldn't.
Presumably, the birds don't need visitor badges. 

*****

The line moved very quickly, and I walked from the Gateway Center to the conference, arriving just in time for the keynote address, given by a very senior Federal government official. The topic of the address was pretty much the same topic covered in 80% of gatherings of government information technology people; that topic being DATA: How to gather it, how to organize it, how to use it to measure and quantify stuff, and how to secure it. No one seems to know the answers to these questions, least of all me. I'm a layperson. 

The keynote address was in an auditorium that seats about 300 people, so there were microphones set up for the Q&A session. It would never occur to me to ask a question at one of these things, but there are people who live for the opportunity to ask a really insightful, carefully worded question in a public setting. Identity politics bores me to death, but I couldn't help but notice that all four of the questioners were white men in their late 30s and early 40s. Every question was prefaced by a 50-plus word statement that demonstrated the questioner's wide-ranging understanding of all things data. It was like an audition. And who knows, maybe it worked. Maybe this very senior Fed pulled his assistant aside after the Q&A session and said "That guy in the blue striped oxford shirt who asked that really sharp question about extract-transform-load--get me his number. I need him on staff ASAP." 

After the keynote address, we collected swag from exhibitors, and then attended break-out sessions, which were only slightly too-technical; just enough that I felt that I was learning something. In one session (the most technical), the speaker quoted Bill Gates' two rules of automation. To paraphrase: 

1. Automation applied to an efficient process will magnify the efficiency. 
2. Automation applied to an inefficient process will magnify the inefficiency. 

Commenting on artificial intelligence, the same speaker (a scientist who probably understands the topic as well as anyone) said that no one really understands AI at all. "You'll never understand how it got the answer; you just have to decide if the answer is believable." 

How should I feel about this? Reassured that it's not just me who can't wrap my head around something so complicated? Or terrified that a senior Federal government scientist can stand in front of a room full of Feds and contractors and blithely claim that a technology that controls more and more of the world every day is a total mystery even to the initiated, and that we shouldn't worry about it? Yeah, definitely the latter. Not reassuring at all.

*****

I actually love going to these conferences. I always learn something, and I get to watch people. And I love to watch people, wherever they are--in a hospital emergency room when they're tired and confused and vulnerable; or at a professional conference, when they're well-dressed and well-prepared and polished like diamonds. They're all interesting. More interesting than birds. And much more interesting than data.

Guided tour

Summer swim season is officially underway. This means (among lots of other things) that between my normal weekly work newsletter, the weekly news update for the government project, weekly emails to the swim team, and this hot mess, I'm writing four once-a-week bulletins. It's hard to keep it all straight. By July, swim team parents will be reading about IV&V and SharePoint development; while government IT people will get to read all about 15-18 boys' freestyle results. Everyone will learn something new. Everybody wins. 

*****

I had to correct a recent Instagram post because of a typo in a hashtag. This was not the result of carelessness or poor spelling skills (as if) so much as failing eyesight.  And it's only going to get worse.

*****
So that's a lot of writing about why I'm not actually writing this week. Instead, enjoy this photo tour of the scenic Twinbrook neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland. All photos taken with my old Samsung Galaxy S7, which I just replaced with a Google Pixel 2. Maybe I'll tell you all about it. Next week, that is. 

*****

A mailbox shaped like a barn, because why not?

Click here to find out why
I have no idea what kind of bird that is.  

No parking sign: One of the few indicators that the neighbors
of Twinbrook might not welcome the daily office worker invasion. 

Flower walk

A trailer with a cat face. Again: Why not?

Neighborhood watch. Someone probably
called the cops on me. 

A Little Free Library!

I read somewhere that bamboo, once it takes root,
cannot be eradicated, so I hope these people actually
 like their bamboo. 

Hand-painted storm drain next to Twinbrook Elementary School.

Birdwatching

It's Tuesday. Last night, I was watching the Capitals vs. Winnipeg with my sons, and I left the room just in time to miss the world's greatest hockey player's 600th lifetime goal. Disappointing, but I got to watch the replay, and it was almost as good as seeing it live.

As I watched the game, I was imagining, for some reason, a character who becomes a hockey fan late in life. After choosing his favorite team, he realizes that he also needs a least-favorite team, a hockey nemesis, as it were. This character is not based on me, of course, because I have the moral clarity to know that the only hockey nemesis that anyone ever needs is present in the form of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most evil franchise in the worldwide history of professional sports. My character, lacking such moral clarity, chooses the Winnipeg Jets as his nemesis.

"Why Winnipeg?" his family and friends ask him. "What did Manitoba ever do to you?" He doesn't deign to justify his choice or explain his reasoning. He just glares at the TV as his team plays Winnipeg. "Fucking Winnipeg," he snarls, every time the Jets score. That eventually becomes his catchphrase: "Fucking Winnipeg."

*****
Who knows where that came from. Anyway, it's still Tuesday. Speaking of fans, I'm not a particular fan of Rex Tillerson, but he did call Donald Trump a fucking moron on a hot mic, and for that, he'll always have a place in my heart. Godspeed, Rex Tillerson.

*****
After I finished Slouching Towards Bethlehem, I read Havana, which is so far my least-favorite Joan Didion non-fiction. In some ways, it reads like a period piece, with its very Reagan-era preoccupation with Latin American revolutionary politics. Like lots of other literary intellectuals of the 20th century, Didion seems to have had a blind spot about Communism. I mean, I'm sure she's right about totalitarian ideological rigidity among the Cuban exile population in Miami in the 80s, but she doesn't say much about the conditions in Cuba that gave rise to their extremism. Like many other writers who wrote about Latin America in the 80s, she (rightly) condemns Somoza, but gives Castro a pass.

I couldn't decide what to read after Havana. I have a pretty large backlog on my Kindle, but nothing was calling out to me, so I decided to re-read The Thinking Reed, one of Rebecca West's best, and that's already a pretty high bar.  It's just as good as I remembered.  The book takes place in France in the years between the two world wars. One of the principal characters is an immensely wealthy French industrialist who, despite enormous success and power, completely lacks the inclination to abuse or take advantage of the poor or powerless. "Though his ties were with the strong and not with the weak, he would not have had a sparrow fall, anywhere in the world." I have noticed that not every rich and powerful person is like that.

The best part is that it's been so long since I've read it that I really don't remember how it ends. So I'm torn between wanting to rush through it to find out (again) what happens, and wanting to slow down a bit, so that it won't be over too soon.

*****
Thursday: Have you ever cleaned behind your refrigerator? If not, then I don't recommend it. Leave it alone. Nothing to see. The less said, the better.

It had been a long time since our kitchen had been painted, and so I talked my husband into doing it. The paint looks beautiful, but the kitchen is now in a horrifying state of disarray that makes me wonder, just for a minute, if the dingy walls maybe weren't so bad. I don't like disorder. And I have to pretty much leave it as it is for now, because he has to finish the job tomorrow. Horrifying. I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it.

*****
It's Saturday morning now. The kitchen is back in order, and you could eat off the floor behind the refrigerator. Well, you could, but I don't recommend it. I mean it's clean, but it's not perfect. It's still a floor. So don't eat off it. I'll give you a plate.

*****
And now it's Sunday, and I have just a few pages left of The Thinking Reed.  When it's over, the weekend will be over. More importantly, I'll need to find something else to read.  Too bad that Comey's book won't be out until next month. I continue to be torn between actually feeling sorry for Trump's unfortunate staff, enduing threats, insults, and firings via Twitter; and wondering what they expected when they chose to serve a bullying, vindictive, mean-spirited, draft-dodging, pants-on-fire lying coward.  By the time the Comey book is released, there will probably be at least two or three more firings. My money is on McMaster and Sessions, but it could be anyone, I suppose.

Putin just won re-election by a landslide; and somewhere, a sparrow is probably falling. If it's a Russian sparrow, the richest and most powerful man in that country is claiming innocence and feigning outrage that anyone could accuse him of shooting down a sparrow, even as he continues to hold the gun. If it's an American sparrow, it has been subjected to weeks of poking with sticks, as its eventual killer decides if it would be more fun to shoot it out of a tree, or to just set a cat loose on it. I'm losing the thread on this metaphor, so I'll end this episode of sparrows here. Until next week...

Time's up

Sunday: I was going to live-blog the Golden Globes, but then I got bored. Because it was boring. So so so boring. Boring and predictable. Not only did I predict the hours of insufferable, preachy identity politics (not that this took any special psychic powers) but I also predicted the very predictable post-show social media backlash.  Seth Meyers was funny, and I was happy to see wins for Rachel Brosnahan and Sam Rockwell and Elisabeth Moss (who also wore my favorite dress of the night), but I couldn't watch the rest of it. Because I was SO BORED.

So I missed Oprah's speech, and I haven't gotten around to watching it. Another thing that I predicted (again, this didn't require a sixth sense, nor even a fifth one) was the proliferation of Oprah 2020 enthusiasm. I don't mind Oprah. I'm not a particular fan, but I certainly admire what she has accomplished, especially coming as she did from virtually nothing. And she'd be better than Trump, of course, but so would I, and I'm an idiot.

I think that what bothers me about the Oprah groundswell is that people keep expecting politicians to be saviors, and when the politicians fail, they expect celebrities to do the job. And they can't do it either, because someone already did.

Monday: I have been without a day planner for a full week of 2018, which means that I don't have a to-do list, which means that I don't know what to do.

I ordered a planner, which came right after Christmas, but it wasn't quite right. I thought about going back to my beloved Filofax, but then I decided to order another of a pocket planner that I had in 2015 (which is actually also pictured in the Filofax post from 2014, rereading which has prompted me to ask myself why I wrote an 800-word illustrated post about day planners, but that's a question for another day).

Wednesday: My new day planner arrived in the mail, and not a moment too soon. It's exactly the same one that I had in 2015, as I'd hoped. The second week of a new year without any sort of calendar, or agenda, or to-do list, and my life was in shambles. Another day, and the whole operation would have fallen apart.

Thursday: Just for fun, I decided to get the worst haircut that I have ever had in my entire life. Not so much too short, just crazy angles and layers and choppy ends that yielded the overall look of a crazy woman who impulsively cuts her own hair, And not necessarily with scissors.

Friday: I spent 25 minutes with a flatiron this morning, trying to organize and subdue my hair, but to no avail. 25 minutes might not seem like much, but I'm accustomed to a five- to seven-minute hairstyling routine. 25 minutes puts a serious dent in my day. I mean, if I have to spend 25 minutes a day fixing my hair, then when will I have time to blog about nothing? It's an issue.

My husband texted me later in the day, to tell me that he felt a bit flu-ish. I texted back:

I'm sorry to hear that. But I have a shit show growing out of my head. There are worse things than flu.

Though I was loath to let anyone wielding scissors near my head again, I made an emergency hair-fixing appointment for Friday night. The hairstylist looked at my hair with a mixture of puzzlement and dismay. "Wait," she said, "a hairdresser did this?"

"Right?" I said. "I know that you're thinking that I must have cut it myself, but I promise you that I paid someone actual money to do this to me." My hair was horrifying, but validation is always satisfying.

"Hmm," she said. "Well, I can give you a really good haircut, but it will be much shorter than you're probably used to. Or I can just clean this up as best I can. It won't be perfect, but you'll be able to live with it."

I opted for Plan B. It's not perfect, but I can live with it.

Saturday: My house is full of teenagers, only two of whom live here. It's loud, so I'm holed up in a bedroom, reading and writing and watching "Breaking Bad" reruns.  I emerge every so often, just to prevent breakdown of law and order.

Sunday: I went with friends to see "Lady Bird," which I loved; except that we had to sit in the front row, which I hated. The front-row seats, which were the only ones available, cost exactly the same as the seats from which you can actually see the screen, which doesn't seem fair to me. It's an artsy theater, which prides itself on offering a superior movie experience, so later on, I sent them a sharply worded email, just like my grandmother would do, if she knew how to use a computer. I don't expect them to do anything, but I'll probably troll them via email for a few weeks, just for fun. 

Hmm. Maybe I should spend more time on my hair.

Put a bird on it

There's a lady in my neighborhood who writes lovely little pieces for the neighborhood newsletter, describing local nature and wildlife, especially birds.  She's a good, if slightly flowery, writer; and her knowledge of flora and fauna (again, especially birds) is pretty impressive.  When the newsletter arrives in my inbox, I almost always stop what I'm doing to read the latest about the neighborhood's animal residents.

*****

I grew up in the city. We lived in Philadelphia, in a working-class city neighborhood of brick-front rowhouses with stoops that provided a two-step buffer zone between the street and your living room.  Our whole lives depended on man-made infrastructure--the electrical grid and the sewer system and the narrow surface streets over which trucks rumbled, carrying food and supplies.  Dropped in the middle of the wilderness, the average 1970s inner-city Philadelphian would look around for a corner store and, failing to find one, would crouch under a tree and wait impatiently for a bus or a search-and-rescue team (all the time thinking to himself “What—not even a park bench?  What am I paying taxes for?”) I read a lot—the Little House books and the Anne of Green Gables series were favorites—and I couldn’t imagine how life was even possible under nineteenth-century conditions.  “What do you mean, Marilla made Anne a dress?  Made it out of what? Leaves?” I would think to myself.  I knew that Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley didn’t have indoor plumbing, but I didn’t allow myself to think too hard about the implications of that particular lack.  It was too much to contemplate. 

My parents noticed that all of us were completely urbanized and unable to cope with nature in any form.  They’d make half-hearted attempts to get us into the wild, taking us to feed the ducks at Valley Green or forcing us all to walk “back the creek” on nice days, but no one was fooled.  A five-minute observation of my parents in any outdoor setting was enough to demonstrate that they weren’t any better prepared to cope with the stern demands of nature than we were. We were city people. That’s all there was to it. 

I've lived in suburban or beach towns for over 20 years now, so I've learned a bit.  Nature isn't quite as shrouded in mystery as it once was, but I probably still don't know quite as much as I should.  Our neighborhood was built by the Levitt company in the late 1960s, so we're lucky enough to be surrounded by tons of mature shade trees of many beautiful varieties, but I can't distinguish one from another.  We have lots of wildlife, too, but nothing exotic.  Deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, occasional raccoons or chipmunks--even I can tell them apart.

The birds, though, are a whole other thing.  I know pigeons from starlings; and I know robins from bluejays.  A duck couldn't fool me by claiming to be a goose.  I'm pretty sure that buzzard is just a synonym for vulture; and in any event, I know to stay the hell away from them.  But that's the extent of my knowledge of the avian world, and as far as I'm concerned, it's as much as I need.

*****

It's been pretty cold here.  If you're reading this in Minnesota or North Dakota, then go ahead and roll your eyes.  I know that this is nothing compared to where you live.  But a high temperature in the 20s is very cold where I live.  Yesterday, it was no more than 15 degrees outside when I heard a bird singing, chirpy and cheerful, right outside my bedroom window.  I'd been up for some time already, so I wasn't annoyed with the bird, just puzzled.  Who are you, little bird, I wondered; and why on earth haven't you flown south yet? Aren't you all supposed to fly south?

Or maybe it was a cardinal, I thought, not knowing for sure whether or not cardinals actually sing.  My limited knowledge of cardinals was gained from viewing painted ceramic plates and mugs and salt and pepper shakers that depict snowy nature scenes, always populated by a lone cardinal.  It just occurred to me as I heard the birdsong: Do cardinals really like cold weather, or do bad artists just like to paint them against snow and pine trees, for Christmas-y contrast? White, green, and red--what could be more wintery and holidayish?

I'm a curious person, usually.  If I run across an unfamiliar word, I look it up.  When kids ask questions to which I don't have good answers, I do some research.  But it never (and I mean never) occurs to me to take a picture of an unfamiliar shrub and then try to find out what kind of shrub it might be.  I know that there are hundreds (probably thousands) of varieties of birds, and although I've always liked birds, I've never been inspired to try to learn all of their names and particular physical characteristics.  They all have wings; most of them fly.  That's enough knowledge for me.

*****

Still. Chirpy birdsong on an Arctic winter day? (Shut up, Alaska and Michigan.) I couldn't see the bird, so I asked Google if cardinals sing, and as it turns out, they do.  And their song sounds very much like the song that I heard outside my icy-cold window.  

*****

And that's likely as far as my nature study will go.  I have limited brain capacity. If I'm going to maintain my wide renown for being an endless fount of useless historical, cultural, and entertainment trivia; an ironclad authority on punctuation, and an outstanding speller, then I can't start using valuable brain cells on wildlife research.  Something has to give, you know?