The opening day of rifle season. Deer run back and forth through the laurel—each shift of the wind must bring a different human’s stink.
The view from my front porch every morning, in 140 or fewer characters
Monthly Archives: November 2009
Soft-focus shadows from the high, thin...
Soft-focus shadows from the high, thin clouds. Chickadees are calling chirree-chirrup, a car door slams, a crow goes yelling into the sun.
The female cardinal—a being guaranteed...
The female cardinal—a being guaranteed to unsettle conservative Catholics—answers her mate’s anxious chirps, crest bent back by the wind.
Tagged cardinal
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A tulip poplar key helicopters past...
A tulip poplar key helicopters past the porch, shook loose by a squirrel at the edge of the woods rummaging among the spikey cups of seeds.
Tagged gray squirrel, tulip tree
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As if giving thanks, the thin, wavering...
As if giving thanks, the thin, wavering call of a white-throated sparrow. The dawn sky half-cloud, half-clear. A distant owl.
Tagged great-horned owl, white-throated sparrow
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Damp and overcast, but every bird on...
Damp and overcast, but every bird on the mountain seems to be passing through my yard, wings flashing like old coins, like wooden nickels.
Tagged birdwatching
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Rain and fog with raven: silent, just...
Rain and fog with raven: silent, just above the treetops. White-throated sparrows and a freight train whistling at the same pitch.
Tagged fog, raven, train, white-throated sparrow
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Gray morning with raven: that gutteral...
Gray morning with raven: that gutteral, wild cry so inadequately rendered in birders’ onomatopoeia as Bonk, bonk.
Tagged raven
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The still, gray morning is interrupted...
The still, gray morning is interrupted by the stuttering roar of a pickup full of hunters hauling an enormous homemade wooden tree stand.
A half-grown barn cat crawls out from...
A half-grown barn cat crawls out from under the house, gray and bedraggled as a clump of drier lint. One jay rasping at the top of a locust.
