Cold and mostly clear. An occasional sound of trains or traffic rises above the shush of wind. A single red cloud scuds overhead and disappears off east.
November 12, 2025
Cold and gray, with the wind hissing through the last few oak leaves still on the trees. The male Carolina wren sleeps in past his mate, her ‘response’ preceding his call by nearly five minutes.
November 11, 2025
A bitter wind has brought the first, thin snowfall. I open my folding seat cushion and find a yellow leaf nestled like a letter in an envelope.
November 10, 2025
Fine flakes falling from a mottled gray sky. At the bottom of the hollow, two trains whistle the crossing at once, one high, one low.
November 9, 2025
Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.
November 8, 2025
Mostly clear after last night’s rain. A flat-tire moon hangs low in the west. The wingbeats of a raven are, for a few moments, the loudest sound.
November 7, 2025
Cold and still. The sun is a bright smudge slowly shrinking into a blaze as the clouds thin out. A train horn blows an almost perfect minor chord.
November 6, 2025
Clear and cold, with wind supplying all the voices in the dawn chorus. A crow rockets past, wings at an oblique angle to its direction of travel, cheering itself on.
November 5, 2025
A mackerel sky slowly clearing off by mid-morning. A Carolina wren trills in the distance. The slightest of breezes makes the tulip tree’s remaining leaves tremble.
November 4, 2025
The red of the oaks gets an assist, first from the dawn and then the sunrise, blazing scarlet, copper or burgundy in each vase-shaped crown.
November 3, 2025
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.
November 2, 2025
Clear and cold. The sun pops up—the pea in our daylight-savings shell game. A screech owl begins to trill.
November 1, 2025
Red sky behind red leaves at sunrise. In the yard, big winds have stripped the tulip tree of all but its smallest leaves—the sheerest of dresses.
October 31, 2025
Cold wind seasoned with rain—almost maritime weather. I sit in my old barn coat like a barnacle, listening for the approach of dawn.