After many years of taking Ubuntu updates without thinking much about it, one of my Thinkpads just hiccupped. Attempting to reboot, cryptsetup waits for a bit, then dumps me in to busybox.

A quick search isn't turning up howls of pain from elsewhere, but does turn up some (old?) advise. Time to track down rescue media.

Fired up the Merlin app this morning and set it in a window close to the bird feeders. In ten minutes, Merlin (credibly) identified: chestnut-backed chickadee, house finch, american crow, anna's hummingbird, black phoebe, oak titmouse, lesser goldfinch, bewick's wren, american goldfinch, california towhee, spotted towhee, mallard, western bluebird, california scrub-jay, dark-eyed junco.

Notably absent: white-breasted nuthatches, who must have been put off by the crowd; woodpackers, who typically start in later; and mourning doves, who were quietly hanging around under the feeders. There were robins here two weeks ago, but they must have been passing through.

Thanks here go to the crows, who've been keeping the hawks away.

Elapsed time from:

"I should probably clean out the coffee grinder."

to:

"Oh, dear God!"

about 15 seconds.