The Carolina wren goes from querulous chirps to full-throated denunciations from the top of the dead cherry tree. But the snow continues.
Carolina wren
2/25/2012
Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy.
2/24/2012
Rain has erased the last patches of snow. The lilac bush gives birth to a cardinal, a wren, four white-crowned sparrows and a chipmunk.
1/8/2012
A wren sits grooming itself in the sun on the peak of the springhouse roof, fluffing out its breast feathers, probing under its wings.
12/23/2011
The Carolina wrens are all worked up about something. One of them lands on the porch railing and harrangues me, bobbing like an angry toy.
12/18/2011
A pair of Carolina wrens—one in the lilac, the other in the dead cherry—flit from branch to branch, tasting the new-fallen snow.
11/26/2011
Another warm morning. A Carolina wren pops out of the bridal wreath bush like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and ascends the lilac, singing.
11/6/2011
A Carolina wren breaks the silence, bobbing up and down on the peak of the springhouse roof: one side frosty, the other steaming in the sun.
10/4/2011
A pair of Carolina wrens call back and forth across the yard, the female responding to each exuberant outpouring with the same terse note.
8/24/2011
A Carolina wren rattles in the rain gutter, perching on the rim — its own feeding trough — and bobs up and down on its backward knees.
8/8/2011
A honeybee conducts a slow inspection of the porch railing, including my boots. I’m pondering the secret cousinship of wrens and crickets.
7/16/2011
A Carolina wren swipes its bill back and forth on the end of a dead limb, as if sharpening a knife. A groundhog sneezes in the strong sun.
12/30/2010
I stare bleary-eyed at a chickadee darting through the lilac, listen to dueting wrens. The sun, too, is blurred by a kind of mucous.
12/27/2010
Between gusts of wind, the burble of a Carolina wren. Two ravens veer low over the trees, croaking, pursued by a pair of crows.