The New Jersey State Bird

Is not the middle finger

In New Jersey, we joke that the state bird is flipping the middle finger, especially while driving. If you are in the left lane and not exceeding the speed limit, you may get to add this bird to your life list.

In reality, the Eastern Goldfinch is the State Bird of New Jersey, and I hadn’t seen one until a year or two ago. At least that I remember. I always liked watching wild animals, and would often stop on my walks home from school to watch the ducks—Mallards, that is—in a branch of the Third River in Booth Park, in my hometown of Nutley. In middle school, being the kid who watches ducks isn’t very cool.

But I’ve never concerned myself with being cool.

Mallards don’t, either. They’re common, they aren’t usually very shy, and they just want to float around and dive for nibbles. But if you look closely, they’ve got a dark emerald sheen and a blue badge, or a nice herringbone feather pattern, depending.

Goldfinches, on the other hand, are pretty cool.

I mean, look at this one. It’s still March, and we’ve got bright yellow sun bolts flying around with Groucho Marx eyebrows, and sharp, zebra striped cloaks. They are fast and fighty, chasing one another around and paying no mind to the red House Finches or streamlined speckled European Starlings who’ve been here earlier, perhaps even all year.

I’ve mostly photographed Goldfinches in my yard, at the feeder. In the parks and woods, they are often too fast and shy. I heard them, and learned to identify their song—thanks to Cornell’s app, Merlin—long before I spotted any. Then I caught a few in my field glasses, and finally, they began to frequent my yard.

Like Eastern Bluebirds, their color makes them a joy. I can admire a well-reddened House Finch, and of course a Cardinal, and the flash of red that denotes a Downy Woodpecker. There was one in the yard today, and I had to watch it crawl under boughs and branches, in its beautiful black and white cape. I mean, if you stop smiling at these little fierce birds, you’re burned out.

Down at Timber Creek this afternoon, I was enjoying the warmer weather and the company of a half dozen Hooded Mergansers, who are uncommon for the area, but like to drop in. I once again heard my pal the Belted Kingfisher, but did not spot them. Which is fine, because one has taken residence at the drainage pond by the county college, where I go mountain bike riding in the morning. I saw them flying around and heard them chittering excitedly, likely to warn its mate of the big goon on a bike hurtling down the path. I’ve seen a Great Blue Heron hunting in this pond before, but this is the first Kingfisher. I hope they make a nest there!

The Mergansers stayed far away, but I was able to identify them because of their namesake feature, the big white stripe on their heads. They’re another favorite. I finally spotted male Wood Ducks at Timber Creek not long after the thaw, but I didn’t have my camera, and they were at the extent of the range of my binoculars, anyway. I photographed some chunky ones in Montreal at the Botanical Garden last autumn, and with luck we’ll be visiting again in early summer. I’ll have my camera ready.

That’s the rest of my Goldfinch gallery, some regal, and some, like the last one, undignified and poofy! I’m grateful they dropped by. But I’m not going to take the Starlings and Dark-Eyed Juncos for granted. For example, look at this Junco’s junk!

I haven’t felt like writing much, but I can always talk about birds and nature that I’ve seen. I took my sister to a St. Patrick’s Day drag queen brunch on the occasion of our deceased mother’s birthday, because it’s what she would have wanted, and we both could use the distraction. It was nice to be surrounded by people full of joy and love and not hate, and to know that we are not alone.

I watched a bunch of Oscar-nominated movies, and the ones that stuck with me most were Bugonia and Hamnet. I’ve enjoyed all the collaborations between Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos, and Bugonia was no exception. Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet was beautiful to watch, if painful at times. It’s a fictionalization of the life of Anne Hathaway and her husband William Shakespeare, though never named, and the grief that was the inspiration for the play Hamlet.

We don’t know much of the reality, but the maddening details inspired O’Farrell to bring this story to life, and it is true enough; the book is true to itself, and its story is brought to stunning life on screen. I wanted it to win for cinematography, because though some colors are drab, it lacks the dullness and darkness that so many movies and television shows give to the past. It’s not a damn aged newsreel or faded photograph, damn it. We did not live in black and white, or faded Polaroids.

Another great watch was Heated Rivalry. Yeah, there’s a lot of hot gay sex, but it’s a drama, and one lacking all the tropes and shortcuts and frankly, the bullshit we come to accept as required for a story. It’s real enough and fun and heartfelt; it never winks at the audience or tries to be cool, or inflicts a morality on us. It’s true in that it’s what should be. There’s drama without anyone having to be stupid or killed or evil for evil’s sake. It’s certainly not for everybody, but I’ll leave this excellent review by Wesley Morris do the talking.

And to join in sharing good news, the BBC reports on

The rewilding milestone Earth has already passed

…according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been slowly falling ever since. Around the world, farmland is being replaced by grasslands, trees and bush. Wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands in areas they had once dominated.

I’m sharing that because I hadn’t seen it on my usual trio of good news sites, Fix the News, Earth Hope, and The Weekly Anthropocene. (They should all be in my Recommended section, or a quick search will get you there.)

This weekend the people of New Jersey and all over the country gave the unofficial state bird to the wanna-be monarch who is wreaking havoc all over the world, to deflect from charges that he raped children. I attended another No Kings protest, as did many thousands of people who are tired of endless war, thugs kidnapping their neighbors, and unelected cronies looting the public trust. These protests will likely be glossed over in favor of stories of a has-been golfer’s DUI arrest, or a violent video posted on social media, to keep people afraid at home scrolling on their phones, despite the historically low crime rate.

This was another excellent read from Antonia Malchik, and included an excerpt of a powerful poem. Poets can do great things, if they try…

“To your mad world—one answer: I refuse.”
—Marina Tsvetaeva, from “Poems to Czechoslovakia”, 1939

Bound for hell

Stick together. Help each other. See you in a week or two.