Fog. Again this morning a killdeer’s keening cry. Yard and field are almost snow-free now, and perhaps their flattened state appeals to him.
2010
March 11, 2010
Sweating in the 50-degree heat, my head swims with a literal spring fever. I envy the juncos hopping on a patch of snow, their quiet notes.
March 10, 2010
A wedge of geese, high against the clouds, headed due north: migrants. The first song sparrow of the year breaks into his trademark song.
March 9, 2010
Tundra swans at sunrise—their ethereal flutes, their shining white forms—are trailed by a local Canada goose and the crescent moon.
March 8, 2010
A chipmunk dashes over the snow from one tree melt-hole to another. A downy woodpecker finds a hollow limb that makes him sound enormous.
March 7, 2010
The white field is striped with tree shadows like a map of the Midwest, blue highways all running parallel. It’s impossible not to get lost.
March 6, 2010
Clear and cold. A silent pileated woodpecker propels itself through the sunlit upper air with great slow strokes of its shining oars.
March 5, 2010
Dawn. The Cooper’s hawk is back, his kak-kak-kak echoing off the icy snow. I scan the trees, a haystack of branches, for that fierce needle.
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from… March 4, 2010
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from the electric line, and suddenly it feels 25 degrees warmer. A ragged V of geese, too low to be migrants.
March 3, 2010
A wet spring snow clings to everything and coats both ends of the porch, where something very tiny has left an arrow-straight trail of dots.
March 2, 2010
A squirrel bounds over the snow with a newly disinterred walnut in its teeth. Behind it in the yard, a neat hole ringed with pieces of husk.
March 1, 2010
The sound of Monday carries on the wind over the ridge. Here, patches of blue, none of them yet coinciding with the sun. A raven croaks.
February 28, 2010
A cacophony of crows, doves, cardinal, titmouse, nuthatch, woodpecker, squirrel, locomotive, all amid the silent carpet-bombing of the snow.
February 27, 2010
The high winds have stopped, but who knows how much snow has fallen? An apple core tossed into the yard for the deer disappears with a thud.