The solstice dawns cold and overcast, with a small lens of clear sky on the eastern horizon. A thin, wavering song from the meadow: the first white-throated sparrow has woken up.
white-throated sparrow
10/26/2023
Sunrise: pink and orange in the sky as on the hillside. A white-breasted nuthatch punctuates a white-throated sparrow’s song.
10/24/2023
Clear and cold with a heavy inversion layer: sparrow sounds blend with beeping quarry trucks. In the dim light, all the autumn colors look like blood.
10/16/2023
Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
1/5/2023
Fifteen minutes after sunrise, the cloud-lid lifts, and a bright seam appears above the horizon. A white-throated sparrow sings two notes and stops.
10/24/2022
High, slow-moving reefs of cloud at sunrise. The white-throated sparrows in the meadow conclude their chittering and go their separate ways.
10/19/2022
In the half-light of dawn, wet snow falls through the dimly glowing autumn leaves. A white-throated sparrow’s plaintive note.
4/10/2022
Snowflakes dance wildly but all the daffodils can do is nod and sway. O sweet Canada, sings the sparrow.
12/9/2021
Hard frost. As the sky reddens, the meadow comes alive with chirps and trills. A milkweed pod’s frozen spill of gossamer.
11/4/2021
25F degrees at dawn. A bat flies low over the meadow as the white-throated sparrows tune up. Frost-encrusted blades of grass seem to glow.
10/27/2021
The slender reed of a white-throated sparrow’s voice trembles in the wind. A hole opens in the clouds, blue and sunrise pink.
10/23/2021
A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
10/20/2021
Sunrise inches forward, chirp by chirp: towhee, white-throated sparrow. A rabbit gazes at me from the end of the porch with eyes dark as cisterns.
10/14/2021
Just past sunrise. Ground fog in the meadow full of white-throated sparrows. A screech owl trills from the powerline.