Clear and cool. The wheezing of a gnatcatcher from the tallest walnut tree. A gangly hangingfly comes fluttering under the eaves.
Cool and still damp from yesterday afternoon’s downpour. Goldfinches go chittering through the treetops. Drinking the last of my tea in silence, I feel the absense of a resident Carolina wren pair—those endlessly enthusiastic assertions, and the female’s succinct replies.
Faint rumors of a storm at midmorning; the sun briefly goes in. The big tulip tree at the woods’ edge raises a thousand yellow cups of nectar to the white sky and its winged legions of beetles.
Sun and thin clouds—and almost autumnal feeling to the air. But a hooded warbler’s insistent call quickly dispells that impression. A groundhog pops up beside the porch, sees me and disappears again.
Mid-morning, and a small fly warms itself on the black keys of my laptop. The crow family makes its usual racket off in the sun-stuck woods. Vireos and a wood pewee reiterate their territorial claims.
A yellow-throated vireo sings, right below the sun flooding through the canopy to half blind me. I hear the deer before I see her: a cracked twig, the sound of chewing.
A small plane with a loud motor is the only thing in the sky besides the sun. In its wake, the distant cooing of a dove. I notice that the dead heads now outnumber the living in my iris patch.
With the forest in full leaf, I have to wait for the sun as it glistens in the treetops, stirred by a breeze and the periodical outpourings of an oriole.
Bright sun and cedar waxwings whistling in the top of the tall black locust at the woods’ edge, which I see has finally almost leafed out.
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.
Another perfect morning, the air still so clear I can follow the progress of sunlit gnats on the other side of the yard. A pileated woodpecker drums a quarter mile away. A vireo says “vireo” once and stops.
A cold front that began blowing in just before dawn has brought crystal clarity not just to the air but seemingly also to each bird call. Two wood thrushes tangle at the woods’ edge and retreat, each singing short phrases as if uncertain how their whole song goes.
Light rain. A large bumblebee buzzes past. The phoebe keeps making his sorties from the ring of old fencing around a volunteer red oak seedling, which no doubt appreciates the extra fertilizer.
Sun through thin clouds. A female cardinal foraging under the lilac picks up a twig, examines it, and sets it down again. Through the lilac limbs I spot the long legs of a deer picking her way across the road bank.