Cool and partly sunny. A Cooper’s hawk flies from tree to tree at the woods’ edge, emitting its odd call, then heads off down-hollow, only to slip back five minutes later in silence.
Equinox. I make it out onto the porch just as the sun peeks over the ridge. Phoebes are calling. From the top of a walnut tree, the brown-headed cowbird’s liquid lisp.
Damp, overcast and cool. The pussy willow I planted two years ago is in its glory, gray catkins cottony with droplets of water. A small cloud forms in the meadow behind the barn and drifts up toward the ridge.
Brick-red clouds barely move as a relentless wind rummages through the trees and shrubs on the ridgeside. A thin slice of moon gets lost among tossing limbs.
A fur of hoarfrost that lingers long after the daily woodpecker drum circle has broken up. A raven croaks in answer to a crow, under a hospital-white sky.
Cold and gray at mid-morning. I look up from my book to spot a brown creeper inching up a tree trunk at the woods’ edge. An especially mournful train horn echoes through the hollow.
Crystal-clear sunrise, with a bluebird warbling by the barn. A downy woodpecker at the woods’ edge has found the perfect tenor-tuned snag to rattle, in response to a distant pileated woodpecker’s thunder.
Cool and nearly clear, save for a couple scraps of cloud to catch the sunrise and color up like old leaves. The distant fluting of geese is just audible over the whine of Monday morning traffic.
We may have lost an hour from our phones, but at least the nukes haven’t started flying yet. The half moon sets. A few drops of rain darken the sidewalk. I am regarded gravely by a red squirrel.