Your bird sightings ... including a murmuration in D.C.

Good morning, DMV. It’s Wednesday, Oct. 21.

First things first: I wrote last week about microdosing time with friends. Several of you wrote to tell me how you share microdoses of time with your people, but I want more of your thoughts and ideas. Hit reply and tell me how you microdose time with friends. Now back to our regular programming …

I love how you’ve helped me transform this newsletter — our community gratitude journal — into a back-and-forth conversation with me, you and thousands of readers. I mention a morning rocket launch, and those of you who are early risers show us photos of what you saw in the sky. One reader shares with us a beached buoy in Delaware; another — after reading that edition of my Daily Dose — has a photo taken standing next to it for scale.

And so we continue our dialogue.

Yesterday, I wrote about my birdwatching fail and how I missed seeing the chimney swift roost near my neighborhood. Several of you responded with your fall bird stories.

***

John Cloud, 76, who lives in a 1939 apartment building in Northwest D.C., wrote: “Last Friday, Oct. 16th, there was a major storm right before sunset, with a purple-black shelf cloud. The swifts dived into the chimney. On Saturday, Oct. 17, all was quiet, except for two swifts, which flew in horizontally, then dived into the chimney. Since then — no swifts. They had all departed.”

I asked if he had photos of the birds. He didn’t, but he told me about his daily ritual and how he spotted the birds.

“I grew up on ranches in West Texas, long before the internet. We would stop around sunset to just watch the day end. I still do that, from the roof terrace, seen in my photograph. I go there most days.”

***

Megan Weeks, 34, captured this pic earlier this month of a hawk on a fence in her yard.

“There’s a couple that nests in the trees next to my home. We live at the end of the street in Bowie, Maryland, by a thin stand of trees with a creek flowing through it. It’s incredible the amount of wildlife we see in the suburbs,” Megan wrote to me in an email.

“This bird was spotted one day by my mom. We rushed to the window and watched it for a few minutes as it hunted in my yard. Its eyes were looking to the ‘meadow,’ a section of yard we're trying to turn into native wildflowers and grasses (to mixed success 😅).”

***

And remarkably, this amazing video that Elise Bundl Egan, 37, captured near her home in the Navy Yard neighborhood of D.C. Click and watch — you will thank me.

To my bird-loving readers: My Daily Dose is our community gratitude journal. Please support my work with a monthly or yearly donation to help make this project sustainable. Do you know anyone who would needs a little comfort, joy & community? Forward this to them so they can join our conversation. For newcomers: To subscribe, click here. And to those who already support me: 🙏 .

Capital Weather says: Another picture-perfect fall day. Brilliant sunshine, blue sky and highs climbing through the 60s toward 70. Read the full forecast here.

Here’s a photo from a few months ago: Melissa Nelson, who is “70 years young” and a resident of Laurel, Maryland, captured this image on June 30, in Stratford Harbor on an inlet of the Potomac River in the Northern Neck of Virginia.

“My daughter and daughter-in-law’s home sits on a lovely point of land overlooking the river. The heron frequents the shoreline fishing for its meals from spring to fall and is a welcome sight when it returns from its winter sojourn,” she wrote in her submission.

Share your photos of fall life in the DMV here.

🐦‍⬛