what do you mean, "dream birding?"

i have a disgusting amount of dreams about birding. every other dream eventually devolves into me seeing a bird, saying "i know that guy," and making sure to remember the name of it. this seems to be some sort of unfortunate birding curse that i've developed over the past year or so.

as far as birding goes, i'm not much of a lister. i don't really remember which ones i've seen before, though i'm generally aware of which ones i haven't. for me, i think a big part of the appeal of birding isn't seeing new birds - it's seeing any birds at all, because they are all very cute and funny. i'll still watch a house sparrow feed bugs to a fledgling or the mourning doves putter around on the ground by the feeders. i don't care. they're all great. not to say i don't appreciate when i cross paths with a new character, and i'm absolutely willing to go places with the hopes of seeing a new bird. but it's not my primary reason for birding.

anyways, with that out of the way: i figured it would be fun to start a different kind of list. one with all sorts of dream birds, mostly real, some of them unidentified but still plausible. i'm going to try to include the habitats they were found in and what behaviors they were exhibiting. enjoy.

journal

date: none listed.
species: great blue heron
info: i was riding a little plastic mining cart through some pretty spooky woods at night with the express purpose of birding. at one point, the rail i was riding broke out of the woods, and i passed by the sea, where a great blue heron was standing.

date: none listed.
species: unidentified
info: unknown penguin, very fat, mostly black with white spotting. the patterns on it resembled a spotted skunk, which makes sense because i was reading about those a few hours before i went to sleep. it was swimming in the water and i remember being like, what is it doing in new england in the middle of summer? i remember also thinking it was much larger than i thought a penguin would be, but it was still a realistic enough size.

date: none listed.
species: eastern bluebird
info: female, sitting on the ground. it flew off when i noticed it.

date: none listed.
species: red tailed hawk
info: there was a family of ferrets outside my window and i was calling over to my girlfriend like "look, come check it out!" and she was like "ok one minute." and then the ferrets were doing crazier and crazier shit, they adopted a kitten at some point, but my girlfriend was too busy to look. then a red tailed hawk swooped down and scared them all away.

date: 1/20/2025
species: evening grosbeak
info: i looked outside at the birdfeeder and around 7 or 8 evening grosbeaks were there. this was very exciting as their population is on decline. i have yet to see them in real life.