{"id":37346,"date":"2026-05-12T10:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37346"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:07:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:07:30","slug":"the-birdwatchers-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37346","title":{"rendered":"The Birdwatcher’s Lament"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_8670\"<\/a>From Donna’s perch on the sofa or her recliner, she can comfortably watch both the television and the birds visiting the feeders in the front yard, but from my chair it’s one or the other, not both. Try as we might to rearrange the furniture in our front room, my view is restricted. Last weekend I had an idea \u2014 why not move the bird bath and feeders instead? So I did, and now both of us can watch the birdies and the TV at the same time.<\/p>\n

You may have to click and enlarge the photo to see them, but there are two feeders hanging from the palo verde tree behind the bird bath; a vertical finch feeder and a spherical pigeon-proof feeder for larger birds (don’t worry for the pigeons \u2014 when I refill the feeders I always sprinkle a scoop on the ground for them).<\/p>\n

My morning online news sweep has, over time, moved from The Guardian to Reuters to the BBC and now back to Reuters. The Guardian’s news coverage was slanted in a direction I didn’t like; Reuters was more neutral; the BBC was great until headlined story after story went behind paywalls \u2014 and now I’m back to Reuters. Along with, of course, AP News and Wonkette (whose ideological slant is in line with mine). I occasionally glance at Canadian news on the CBC website, and indulge my nostalgia for the Arctic with visits to the Barents Observer.<\/p>\n

Social media-wise, Facebook remains my go-to for keeping up with friends and family. I love Instagram, and have set it up so that what I post there is automatically shared to Facebook and Threads. Say what you will about Mark Zuckerberg, his moderation policies have kept his three sites from going the way of TikTok and Twitter, which have been overrun by MAGAbots and Nazis. I keep hoping Bluesky will become Old Twitter, and maybe it will \u2014 IMO it’s not there yet.<\/p>\n

But now I’m getting to it: things are not good with Polly, our live-in deadbeat alcoholic daughter. We’re approaching another crisis point, and increasingly it appears she’ll never change. I mean, shit, the woman’s 51 years old. The cake is baked. All we’re doing at this point is enabling her, and she’s ruining what should be our happiest years. I try to keep stuff like this off the blog, but sometimes need to release a little pressure. Whatever we did to make our girl the way she is, we’re sorry and wish we could start over again.<\/p>\n

Not my favorite thing, ending on a down note, but that’s enough for one morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about Mark Zuckerberg, his moderation policies have kept his three sites from going the way of TikTok and Twitter, which have been overrun by MAGAbots and Nazis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,555,16,2,827],"tags":[4893,4765,4894,4895],"class_list":["post-37346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critters","category-local-color","category-media","category-personal","category-social-media","tag-birdsofafeather","tag-newssweep","tag-themetaverse","tag-troubleahead"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37346"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37351,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37346\/revisions\/37351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}