Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Breezy and cool, with occasional outbreaks of sunshine. It takes me two hours to work out that the soft clucking sound I’d thought was a hen turkey is actually a branch rubbing against the gutter for the back roof. A chipmunk rummages under my chair, then scuttles back under the small woodpile next to me.
Overcast and cool. A hen turkey foraging at the woods’ edge suddenly vaults into the air with a great flapping and clucking and lands on a low walnut limb, a red fox like an apparition melting back into the shadows.
The third cystal-clear, cool morning in a row. I block the sun with my hand to watch illuminated grains of dust and pollen stream past in the breeze. A silent hen turkey crosses the road, intent on breakfast.
Mid-morning and the sun-soaked woods erupt with overlapping wild turkey gobbles, one tom getting gobbled up—so to speak—by another. They sound close, but the tiny leaves are already enough cover to hide in.
Clear and still, with a heavy frost. Wild turkeys call and gobble up above the barn, where a blood-red sunrise seeps down into the meadow.
Partly cloudy, humid and still. A hen turkey clucks once from the woods’ edge. I slap myself awake, killing mosquitoes.
A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.
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.
A cooler sunrise this morning with wind from the north. A ruby-crowned kinglet warbles up and down the scale. A hen turkey picks her way through spring onions.
It’s still cool and overcast, but the daffodils have straightened up and bright spots are appearing in the clouds. A hen turkey walks past, head down, selecting small stones for her gizzard.
Overcast and quiet, after the drama of a thunderstorm at dawn. The creekside currant bushes have turned intensely green. A hen turkey’s peevish rasp.
A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles.
Windy and cold. I sit in the sun all bundled up, listening to birdsong through two hats and a hood. My mother calls to tell me about a flock of turkeys.
Heavily overcast and humid. A hen turkey’s anxious call. The springhouse catbird slipping out of her stream of consciousness to mew.