Neil Gaiman's Journal

It's a grey, chilly day. Holly and I filled the birdfeeders, which are being emptied on an almost daily basis by the quantity of birds out there -- grossbeaks by the dozens, goldfinches by the hundreds, woodpeckers by the gross, a bunch of orange orioles, many scarlet cardinals, not to mention several birds I'd never seen before, including a family of what I finally identified as cowbirds, and one bird I spent a good ten minutes trying to find in a bird book before realising that it was the male grossbeak who had flown into the window ten minutes before and had lost all the feathers from his head. No idea why the birds are here in such numbers, but I'll happily keep feeding them.

(I have black paper "shadows of plummetting sparrowhawks" stuck to several of the windows, but still, the muffled thump of a bird sure it was heading for a nice patch of sky, who has just bonked into the kitchen window is heard a bit too often in my house. Like every ten minutes or so.)

Mike, my son, comes back from college tonight, so we're going to the drive-in to watch Spider-man as a family. I hope it thunderstorms: I have very fond memories of a double bill of "Men in Black" and "The Fifth Element" illuminated by lightning. (For anyone out there who doesn't do drive ins, or, for many of you, have them in your country, they are increasingly broadcasting the sound over the car radio: set your radio to the drive-in channel, crank up the volume and feel the car vibrate as spaceships go across the screen.)