Reader, Birder, Herper, Guy

Wait - that's from The Epiplectic Bicycle.

A bird takes off from a telephone wire, its body parallel to the wire and its wings thrust forward. The back and most of the tail are a slightly iridescent blue-green, with a black squared-off tip on the tail and balck-and-white horizontal striped tailfeathers fanned out at the sides. The wings and bill are greyish and its head is black, with a bright yellow eyering.

Gartered Violaceous Trogon (Trogon caligatus) male near Guayabo National Monument, Cartago, Costa Rica, December 2025. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#trogons
#costarica

Sorry, “the greater of $1000 each or actual damages.” Read through IRS 1075.

SSNs are Federal Taxpayer Information. “An unauthorized secondary use of FTI is specifically prohibited and may result in discontinuation of
disclosures to the agency and imposition of civil or criminal penalties on the responsible officials.”

Tropical Screech-Owl (Megascops choliba), Heredia, Costa Rica, January. I know it is in a stress posture - it was roosting at eye level a few feet off a fairly busy sidewalk. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#birdsseenin2026
#owls
#costarica

The Gashlycrumb Tinies! I was a precocious kud and one of my aunts bought this for me at maybe age six, under the impression it was a children’s book.

Our economy: one foot hovering over a recession, the other on a banana peel.

Tell me you used ChatGPT without telling me you used ChatGPT.

If you’ve seen the aftereffects of Robins getting into a treeful of berries, you’ll know how they earned the name.

A tiny hummingbird hovers at a cluster of small purple Verbena flowers. It is green all over, with dark-grey wing feathers, straight black bill and black eyes, a white stripe at the base of its tail, and a long, black, pointed tail.

Green Thorntail (Discosura conversii) male, Rancho Naturalista, Cartago, Costa Rica, December 2025. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#hummingbirds
#costarica

There was a guy in the 90s who went around to bookstores as a Mark Leyner impostor, autographing many Leyner books.

Thank you.

A green bird grasps a vertical vine to pluck small red berries from a large cluster of same. The bird's back is yellow-green, changing to yellow on its nape; its neck, breast, and belly are a Key lime green. Its head is brick-red, and there is a rufous patch on its wings.

Rufous-winged Tanager (Tangara Lavinia), Arenal Observatory Lodge, Arenal, Costa Rica, January. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#birdsseenin2026
#tanagers
#costarica

A small blue bird perched on the end of a thin branch. The branches end in clusters of light-green, pointed leaves and small pinkish berries. The bird has a larger, blue-gray berry impaled on the tip of its thin, black bill with a hooked tip. Its face has a black mask and its eyes are bright red.

Masked Flowerpiercer (Diglossa cyanea), Jardin Botanico de Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador, October 2025. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#birdsseenin2025
#tanagers
#flowerpiercers
#ecuador

8x Hellfire loadout on the Seahawk.

A bird perched on a horizontal branch, looking downward at something. It i mostly a somewhat dirty-looking red overall, with some black feathers poking through on the wings and tail. Its feet and eyes are black, and its slightly heavy bill is black on top and greyish below.

A bird perched on a horizontal branch, looking downward at something. It is mostly yellow-green overall, with some black feathers poking through on the wings and tail. Its feet and eyes are black, and its slightly heavy bill is black on top and greyish below. Her head is arched back, half-open bill pointed skyward, and her wings are half-spread and flattened out horizontally.

Hepatic Tanager (Piranga flava) male (red) and female (yellow-green), Arenal Observatory Lodge, Alajuela, Costa Rica, January. 🌿🪶 #birds
#birding
#nature
#wildlife
#photography
#birdsseenin2026
#tanagers
#costarica

The all-timer for me was a woman next to me on a plane who jumped on Facetime when a thunderstorm kept us from going into the gate. My anger was spiralling silently upward when one of the flight attendants told her she needed to switch to earbuds or hang up. What a hero!

!

A restaurant facade at night. There is a large backlit sign reading “New Panda II. Chinese - (blank) - Thai”

99% sure the blanked-out spot translates to “The sushi was really a bad idea.”

Facetime at the airport is sociopathic.

I had someone say to me in writing this morning “we have to get our ducts in a row.”

I recently purchased a Macbook and wonder if there is a reason Apple decided it should be a real challenge to upload a photo to a web site from your browser.

They can afford to live in Safety Harbor, I see.

Tired: Misperceiving the shadows in Plato's cave as reality.

Wired: Betting on the shadows in Plato's cave.

The neighborhood gas station apparently did not get the memo and had not bumped their prices up when I went to fill up the Toyota yesterday. Glad the other half of our family fleet is an EV, though.

That’s more giving than the Southwestern chain, Kum n’ Go.

I’m ready to break a window or two just thinking about the average potato chip selection in European grocery stores.

Clarification: Pushups involve raising a glass to your mouth.

And would you guess its flavor is tangy?

More importantly, how do you verify its provenance?