A band of salmon-colored cloud above the horizon half an hour past sunrise. From the top branch of a walnut tree, a brown-headed cowbird sings his single, complex note.
cowbird
6/18/2023
The light is still murky and cool at mid-morning as lulls in the avian chorus lengthen. The breeze riffling through walnut leaves. A cowbird’s liquid note.
3/16/2022
Only one, tiny patch of snow remains in view, sheltering on the north side of a laurel thicket. A cowbird’s liquid note.
3/19/2020
The rain eases off by midday but the cowbird at the top of a tall black locust tree continues to spill his single, liquid note.
4/10/2019
Sunny but cooler. The liquid note of a cowbird in the yard. A question mark butterfly careens around the house and collides with my shoe.
4/22/2016
Overcast and damp. A tom turkey’s lusty declarations echo off the hillside, punctuated by the crisp, interrogatory whistles of a cowbird.
3/24/2016
The sun shines through gauzy clouds, giving the morning a faded-photo effect. A squirrel drinks from the stream. A cowbird’s liquid note.
3/27/2014
A second male phoebe has returned. Their warring warbles echo off the hillside at sunrise, interspersed with a cowbird’s liquid notes.
3/18/2012
A brown-headed cowbird perches, as always, at the top of the tallest tree in the yard to maximize the reach of his one-second gurgle.
4/26/2010
Drum of rain on the roof and the birds sound distant—robin, field sparrow, cowbird—the world greener than it’s been in seven months.
6/18/2009
The black-robed cowbird at the top of the dead elm burbles authoritatively, like the Grand Ayatollah of the yard taking credit for the rain.
4/5/2009
Twelve cowbirds in the sunlit crown of a walnut tree take turns with their single, liquid syllable, the blue sky gurgling in every ditch.