Sunrise delayed for a few minutes by a low bank of clouds. A gray squirrel emerges from its nest high in a black cherry and dashes down the newly exposed trunk. A robin adds a few tut-tuts to the chorus of white-throated sparrows.
gray squirrel
Clouds gather in the east, glowing brightly as they smother the sun. A west-bound freight rumbles through the gap. Bits of walnut shell rain down from a squirrel’s breakfast.
Heavy frost in the yard. A few, faint clouds disappear after sunrise, as squirrels climb high into the wine-red crowns of oaks.
Gray skies with a bitter wind. Colored leaves fly past. A pair of gray squirrels meet on the trunk of a black locust and touch snouts.
Bright periods alternate with gloom on a cool, cloudy morning, with an intermittent breeze paging through the tulip tree leaves. A sound like the clacking of a typewriter as a squirrel trots across the metal roof overhead.
Steady rain from heavy clouds, with the seeming glow of orange and yellow leaves in lieu of a sunrise. A drenched gray squirrel beside the porch peers up at the sky.
Cloudy and cold at mid-morning. The high lisp of a brown creeper at the woods’ edge. In the distance, a gray squirrel is airing a complaint about a hawk.
Clear and very quiet at dawn. Some scattered towhee tweets. The thump of a walnut dropped by a half-awake squirrel.
Rain in widely scattered drops, a light seasoning over everything. It intensifies; a half-molted walnut tree begins leafleting the yard. It tapers off. A squirrel chisels open a nut.
Cloudy and cool. The shed skin of a rat snake has blown off the back roof and dangles in the branches of a walnut. In the next tree over, a gray squirrel walks to the end of a limb, sniffing each walnut, and picks the one at the very end.
Sun through thin cirrus. Half an hour of a hawk hunting the yellow woods and I have yet to catch a glimpse, tracking its movement only by squirrel and jay scold-calls.
Cloudy and cool with a 100% chance of falling walnuts—though admittedly, some are being dropped by squirrels. A red-bellied woodpecker keeps up an anxious commentry.
Sunny and cold. The woods are quiet. A red-eyed vireo sings in the middle of the yard. A gray squirrel’s hawk alarm goes off.
Foggy at sunrise. A turkey gobbles non-stop from up in the field, and the woods ring with vireos and ovenbirds. At the edge of the porch, a gray squirrel nuzzles her almost-grown offspring.