Jonathan Crowe

1. Canada leaning hard into our “we’re not Americans” schtick.

2. The replies from Americans to this post provide evidentiary support to this post.

A Northern Shrike (Lanius borealis)—a medium-sized gray, white and black bird with a hooked beak—looks in the general direction of the camera while perching on a black metal shepherd’s hook.

This northern shrike has spent most of the afternoon hunting in our front yard.

The finches and sparrows, usually plentiful, knew what was up and made themselves scarce.

So far it’s caught a vole and left its half-eaten, disemboweled corpse outside our bedroom window. (Standard shrike behaviour.)

I am tremendously fond of this weird little book and you should grab it.

(Rights are reverting to the Gorodischer estate; I’d be shocked if they didn’t put it back in print again at some point. Still.)

“A man in his sixties from Norfolk”—that sounds like the first line of a limerick.

In today’s newsletter: Is a slow performance of Schubert’s impromptus bad or merely wrong? And what do a John Wayne western and the Star Wars special editions have in common? buttondown.com/jonathancrow...

How words are sometimes hard (at least for me), how some resort to AI when they don’t want to do the art, and how a 65-year-old movie seems awfully pertinent all of a sudden. Plus links. All in my latest newsletter: buttondown.com/jonathancrow...

Seeing a lot more mourning doves this winter. At noon today we had more than a dozen of them on our driveway, front yard and street.

The Well-Tempered Clavier.

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A firehose of assumptions Pretzel, our oldest snake (and last remaining corn snake), is somehow still with us. This past summer she started refusing meals, which when a snake is at...

Adventures in geriatric snake care, and confronting some assumptions common to many hobbies. Plus the usual collection of interesting links. All in my latest newsletter: buttondown.com/jonathancrow...

For me it’s been classical music concert livestreams. Watched too much of the Cliburn and Chopin competitions via livestream, and Wigmore Hall streams concerts free on YouTube. Also subscribed to DG's Stage+, which costs but there’s at least one concert/opera a week plus back catalogue.

File 770, Gizmodo, Tonebase.

Sites I’ve tried to visit so far that are affected by the Cloudflare outage: Bookshop, Daring Fireball, JetPens, Kottke, Lightspeed Magazine, MetaFilter, Reactor, Uncanny Magazine.

But if it’s just a matter of loosening up sticky keys, that’s a user-accessible repair. Involves swabbing the segment with isopropyl alcohol (or acetone for the hard cases). Plenty of how-to videos on YouTube (start with Joe Van Cleave, Phoenix Typewriter). (2/2)

I know a guy. He took a swing at some of our more difficult machines a few years ago. His listing isn’t up at the moment but we’ll see if he’s still in business. Stand by. (1/2)

Don’t argue with strangers… and 11 more rules to survive the information crisis Feeling overwhelmed by divisive opinions, endless rows and unreliable facts? Here’s how to weather the data storm

Extract from my new book in the Guardian today!

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

A blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) holds a sunflower seed in its beak while sitting amongst a mess of fallen seed and snow on our back deck.

A blue jay foraging in the mess below the bird feeder.

A Schlumbergera (Christmas or holiday) cactus in bloom, with multiple flowers and buds ready to open, in a purple pot on our kitchen table.

Last year our cactus had a single flower. This year it has ... more. Spending the summer outside seems to have agreed with it.

Two black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) at a bird feeder, one perched on the rim, the other seemingly chilling inside the tray.

A black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) perched at a bird feeder.

The chickadees were swarming the feeder today.

This brings to five the number of frog species physically found on our property (American toads, gray treefrogs, spring peepers, green frogs and wood frogs; we’d only heard treefrogs in the area prior to this).

Ventral view of a gray treefrog (Dryophytes versicolor) resting on the opposite side of our bedroom window, surrounded by pre-dawn darkness and lit from inside. The ventral skin texture and yellow leg colouring are prominent.

When it’s warm and wet, we get frogs—even in October. Yesterday we heard at least one spring peeper calling, and this morning we were surprised by this good-sized gray treefrog on our bedroom window.

Not the greatest picture, but the best I could manage with my phone in the pre-dawn darkness.

Red-bellied snake This minuscule snake is one of North Carolinas smallest snakes, and when newborn, is possibly the smallest of the bunch! This little guy was stuck on the road inside a tire mark. Lucky for him I spott...

Most people who encounter an adult red-bellied snake think it’s a baby snake. No, that’s an adult; it’s just a really small species. THIS is a baby red-bellied snake: flic.kr/p/2rjBmTz (Photo: SBC Wildlife Photography)

I actually still *have* an unused international reply coupon.

*checks*

Date-stamped July 1993.

I don’t think IRCs expire per se, but every conceivable use case for them must have by now.

I’ve seen Winnipeggers wearing little more than a leather jacket in –10°C conditions. I myself have gone without a jacket at 10°C. (I admit that I was uncomfortable wearing shorts and jacket at 6°C.)

We are not a safe point of reference.

A Clydesdale horse pulling a light cart exits the Shawville Arena.

Two Clydesdale horses pulling a cart approach the entrance to the Shawville Arena.

Two Belgian horses wait their turn at the Shawville Fair’s heavy horse pull event.

A few horse photos taken at the Shawville Fair on Labour Day weekend.

A striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) forages for grubs on our front lawn.

A striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) forages for grubs on our front lawn.

A striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) forages for grubs on our front lawn.

A striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) forages for grubs on our front lawn.

We had a skunk visitor this morning.

A very small American toad (Anaxyrus americanus), probably born this year, is held between fingers.

How interesting: a tiny toad.

Walter, an orange tabby cat with a clipped left ear, is cradled in my wife’s lap. He seems unsure of the whole thing.

Walter is unconvinced.

Scourge, a black cat, rolls over onto his back in a canvas hammock doing the foursies-feetsies thing while bathed in sunlight, trying to be as cute as possible.

Is baby.

New garden project just dropped.