I've started writing this about 10 times only to delete what's ends up becoming a whiny whine-fest about how self-indulgent it is to write about my problems when the world is in such turmoil and chaos. I'll try and be brief, to get to my point, to not spiral into self-loathing and a whiny whine-fest.
I should also warn you that this entry is birding heavy. I'm sorry.
I'm sad to report that 2026 has been hard. It's only 12 days old.
What started with a cold and a sinus infection in 2025, turned in to a rash, and then into a second cold in under a month. The stress on my body was intense, but the stress on mind was, what can best be described as, a total destruction. I sat around, looking around my apartment, thinking I should be doing something, but not wanting to move or think or do anything but watch escapist television and cry. Any of the activities I do to restore me were impossible – lifting, walking, forcing my dog to snuggle with me.
This, and a few other things, dropped me in to a pretty deep crisis of self.
Who am I without dog? Without gym? Without birds?
State of my Life List: 2026
By January 12, 2025, I'd added 9 birds to my life list. Granted, 4 of them were birds that I see regularly but had never recorded (they count if you want them to! isn't that wild?).
By January 10, 2026, I'd added exactly none birds to my life list. Or really any list.
It's a little sad to report, but anecdotally people are reporting fewer birds overall, from their backyards to the seacoast. We just aren't seeing as many. My short walks around the library had yielded little to no sightings of common cold weather friends – chickadees, titmice, juncos. All relatively scarce this year.
There have still been some exciting reports on the Rare Bird Alerts, though I'm not a twitcher (in this case, that doesn't mean someone who streams their whole life on the internet) and won't drop my whole life to go see a rare bird. Plus, as mentioned, my whole life has been on the couch for the first week and a half of 2026.
Shaking Off the Rust
The first day I felt like I could manage it, I decided to run some errands, and drop everything in my life to go look at a rare bird for the area. I grabbed my camera and headed down to Manchester to steal a glance at a reported Barrow's Goldeneye.
While I was ill prepared for the ice that was still on the banks of the Merrimack River, and I was carrying around a heavy ass camera for the first time in weeks, and I was disheartened to find empty cans and bottles littered everywhere, there was something absolutely restorative about this simple effort. All I did was go somewhere to look at a bird, a bird I'd seen another variation of many, many times. A little duck bird with a slightly bigger white patch on his face and a blue head instead of green.
As I took in the whole scene, the blue sky, the gentle water, the little flotilla of Goldeneye and Mergansers, I felt my self filling my meat suit again. The core of me, what makes me a person, filled me up like liquid being poured into a glass.
It's corny. I know it's corny. But it's real, and I needed it.
I needed the birds, and the gym. And I managed to get both in one day.
Failing
But, of course, with the success of the Goldeneye, comes the failure of the Razorbill.
Dan and I went on a true birding trip yesterday, driving from spot to spot on the seacoast in an attempt to see Razorbills. We failed at every stop.
I had asked in a birding group about whether a scope was necessary to see the Razorbills, and a couple of responses indicated that they've been hard to see this year as they just don't seem to be showing up like they usually do. The lack of birds this year has hit me extra hard, maybe because it feels like I missed my chance to really appreciate what was around me. One day, because of the way capitalism and environmental deregulation have destabilized the natural world, there will be no more birds.
“I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing — not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There’s little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?”– Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
But that's something for another day.
It doesn't mean the entire trip was a waste. We added 2 more birds to the list – the Horned Grebe and Black Scoter. Both are common enough on the coast, but entirely new to us.
We saw 11 hawks in one day. A total of 14 Common Loons, and 1 Red-Throated Loon. We had transcendent experiences with Snow Buntings flying over us in a beautiful, chittering flock. Sanderlings running so close to us it was almost as if they had no idea we were there. Reminders that the world is so much more than the sadness that seems omni-present, more than the cruelty of humans toward everything.
This got long! Thank you for sticking with me, if you did. Sometimes you just have to process something, get it out of your head, commit it to paper or pixels or whatever. For whatever it's worth, that's what this blog is for me.
