Soft sunlight and the scent of autumn leaf-mould. Two female hummingbirds visit the jewelweed together and leave together, but seem quite competitive around the flowers: a mother trying to distance herself from a fledged offspring, I suppose.
Cloudless and cool. The cicadas start up before it even reaches 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Sunlight pools at the entrance to the trail into the woods. Half the bracken fronds in the yard have turned bronze.
An autumnal morning, heavily overcast and cool. The continuous trill of tree crickets counterbalances the stream’s trickle: two kinds of traffic. A pileated woodpecker cackles.
An hour before sunrise, the clouds part to reveal the Pleiades above the ridge, as well as the V-shape that ancient Babylonians saw as a bull’s head—clearly a cosmic rat. A distant whine of tires as the first commuters take to the road.
Again I am the object of a hummingbird’s intense study from three feet away, this time for nearly a minute. Then she’s off to the back of the house and the banks of orange jewelweed there.
Cool and mostly clear. A raven croaks loudly from the vicinty of the powerline, just after the bird app tells me American Crow is my Bird of the Day. The smell of woodsmoke. A dog-day cicada starts up.
Foggy and cool, the spring still loud with yesterday’s rain. A murmur of voices from the other house—a radio tuned to the news. Somewhere up in the woods, a tree crashes down.
A soft shimmer of rain at dawn, increasing as the light grows. By sunrise it’s drowning out the wren’s song. A mosquito sings in my ear.
Cool and clear. Sunlight pours through a hole in the forest canopy into the crown of a black walnut tree, erasing the difference between green and yellow leaves. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge—not the full song, just a kind of two-syllable Wow.
A rare low-humidity morning begins with crows heralding the sunrise and a screech owl trilling in the distance. Yellow clouds fade to white. A bluebird begins warbling as I open my laptop.
An hour past sunrise, one last, brief shower before it clears—or so I hope. A deer walks out of the woods and up the driveway, followed by a fawn whose spots are just beginning to fade.
Heavily overcast at sunrise. A screech owl trills up on the ridge, answered by a trill from down along the road. Moments later, the first patter of rain.
Cool and clear, with bluebird and cardinal song. The leaves of the tulip tree sapling in my yard are nearly white with dew. I grease my boots.
Long-sleeve weather at sunrise. A female hummingbird hovers in front of me, then on either side, as if trying to recall where she knows me from.