Sunday I took an early walk at Allen Station Park. I saw my first Northern Flicker of the Autumn. I listened to a sermon by the Reverend Tom Are of Village Presbyterian in Kansas, which is the church at which my wife and I got married. I also walked in Bethany Lakes Park, where I saw Pied-Billed Grebes among ten species of birds.
In the afternoon, I walked in Glendover Park in Allen. I listened to the Dallas Cowboys football game on the radio. The Dallas quarterback, Dak Prescott, got injured. I was glad I heard that on radio rather than witnessing the injury. I saw my first Dark-Eyed Junco of the Autumn. We ate grilled chicken drumsticks with mild Indian-style spices or dinner.
I logged my sightings into my eBird bird list. I saw that for the first 11 days of October, I saw 29 different species in Collin County each of the three years. I did not yet compare the lists to see how much they differed in which species were seen.
On a whim, I looked up someone I had a class with in high school on the internet. I was pleased to find her social media, which indicated that she rode horses for fun and lived with her husband in a rural area not far from where we went to high school in Arkansas. When we were in high school, she had just transferred to our school from one in California. I recall doing her a minor discourtesy in high school by declining to work with her on a two-person school project, and instead working with someone else. I had not then learned the lesson that one should be kind to the people who are kind to one. I had been self-conscious instead. I feel a little guilt some 43 years later, a sort of converse of the Maya Angelou quote.
I made more progress on Sofia Samatar's "A Stranger in Olondria." I will likely finish it soon. It's been a good read.
from Dreamwidth, because two posts of the same text are twice as nice