{"id":19898,"date":"2026-02-12T15:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/my-spark-bird\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:09:21","slug":"my-spark-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/my-spark-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"My spark bird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/spark_bird\">spark bird<\/a> was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/guide\/Bufflehead\/overview\">Bufflehead<\/a> duck seen in 1991 through the binoculars that were a childhood gift. I was walking with Caitlin across a bridge in Peterborough on a still and hot summer night and we were looking for birds. She pointed to the small black and white duck with a bright white patch on its head and said &quot;Bufflehead.&quot; \u00a0For whatever reason, I thought the only ducks were Mallards, familiar to the parks and lake shore where I grew up in Toronto. \u00a0The Bufflehead was a revelation. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Today I found <a href=\"https:\/\/searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com\">this BEAUTIFUL site called &quot;Searching for Birds&quot;<\/a> which you should lose yourself in.<\/p>\n<p>And also, with yesterday&#39;s Stellar Jay, I&#39;m up to 157 species for the year so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My spark bird was a Bufflehead duck seen in 1991 through the binoculars that were a childhood gift. I was walking with Caitlin across a bridge in Peterborough on a still and hot summer night and we were looking for birds. She pointed to the small black and white duck with a bright white patch on its head and said &quot;Bufflehead.&quot; \u00a0For whatever reason, I thought the only ducks were Mallards, familiar to the parks and lake shore where I grew up in Toronto. \u00a0The Bufflehead was a revelation. \u00a0 Today I found this BEAUTIFUL site called &quot;Searching for Birds&quot; &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-5aW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}