A heavy white sky giving few hints of sunrise. In the distance, the faint bells of a wood thrush. A field sparrow’s accelerating rush toward silence.
field sparrow
5/23/2022
Half awake at half-light. The dawn chorus starts promptly at 5:00 with field sparrow and towhee, then song sparrow, phoebe, robin. Train horn.
4/5/2022
Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
7/14/2021
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.
6/5/2021
Venus in the dawn sky. Phoebe, field sparrow, wood pewee. The alarm-snorts of a deer.
4/6/2021
Overcast and still. A field sparrow’s accelerating note. A turkey hunter and his wife, led by their dog, carry a tree stand into the woods.
3/13/2021
The temperature’s back below freezing—the price we pay for such an achingly blue sky. Up by the garage, a field sparrow’s accelerating chant.
6/5/2020
Overcast. The first milky-white peony is open, facing the road where a sparrow struggles to swallow a large green caterpillar.
5/18/2020
A field sparrow fresh from bathing and a hummingbird fresh from fighting sit two feet apart on a walnut branch, shaking their feathers.
4/12/2020
Faint sunlight. A gnatcatcher’s nasal notes against the background noise of field sparrows. My mother calls to come look at a dead mole.
4/1/2020
Holes in the clouds by late morning. Field sparrows trill almost non-stop. My mother says she can smell my coffee way up in the woods.
3/10/2020
Overcast. A field sparrow’s ascending note. In the dead grass below the stone wall, an otherwise motionless garter snake tastes the air.
4/16/2019
A kestrel lands on a limb at the woods’ edge, looks around and flies off, skimming the ground. The field sparrow barely pauses his song.
3/30/2019
Distant gunshots from the shooting range in the valley. The impression of rising excitement in a field sparrow’s song.