It was very cold today, so what I had intended to be a long walk became a short meandering near my apartment. I decided to go to a part of the Tiergarten that is nearest to us, but that is not well visited, except by strange old men. There is a shallow pond there that is always attractive no matter what the season. It did not disappoint today, surrounded by these wonderful bushes with red stems. I looked around very hard for birds but could only hear them high in the trees. “This is no problem!” I thought. “I’ll listen to their songs, remember them, and look them up later.” Fool.

Remembering a bird song is incredibly hard. Even harder is remembering multiple bird songs while standing in a bank of snow with freezing toes. I found that after hearing a song, I could barely even describe it to myself. Something like “a tweet followed by three chirpy bits” was the best I could come up with. Not terribly useful. It is amazing how difficult it is to remember or distinguish something when one doesn’t have the words for it. I have found that the same applies to birds in general. When I first came here, I noticed that there were many birds but didn’t distinguish between them. But as soon as I learned the name of a bird, I would begin seeing that particular bird everywhere. Language is very powerful in this case. Which means that it will help to either find or invent a vocabulary to describe these songs, if I hope to remember them. If anyone knows about this, or has any tricks, please let me know!

As I turned back towards my apartment I was rewarded with a sight of the cutest birds I have yet seen here in Berlin, the Schwanzmeise (long-tailed tit). These are another kind of tit that travel around in little groups. They have tiny little dots for eyes, tiny little beaks, and slender long tails sticking out from their round little bodies. They were hopping around frantically from fat ball to fat ball. I tried very hard to get a good photograph, but these little birds scare off pretty easily, so I couldn’t get close. Despite the fact that it was only 3:30 pm, it was dark enough outside that I needed to use the flash. I present you with the least-fuzzy photographs I have, taken before my fingers completely froze and as the police were slowly driving by, looking at me suspiciously. I went home immediately and made soup.