While one chickadee digs out their den, pecking at the rotten cherry wood, its mate waits atop the stump, grooming its pale breast feathers.
2013
April 9, 2013
A wild turkey gobbling on the far ridge. Two field sparrows trade calls, notes rising as they accelerate like engines being revved up.
April 8, 2013
Back from migration, a Louisiana waterthrush sings above the trickle of a stream. Chickadees excavate a den hole in the dead cherry stump.
April 7, 2013
A warm morning. When the sun goes in, the birds at last grow quiet, and I can hear wood frogs calling down in the boggy corner of the field.
April 6, 2013
As my father walks out of the woods, a rabbit bursts from a rosebush and dashes under the porch. A zebra spider circles the rim of my mug.
April 5, 2013
The phoebe sings lustily for the first time in days, hawking flies on the sunny side of the barn. Bits of cattail down rise from the marsh.
April 4, 2013
Soft light filtered by a film of cloud. A squirrel carrying a freshly exhumed walnut bounds under the broken dog statue and into the lilac.
April 3, 2013
All up the hillside, the glossy leaves of mountain laurel shimmer in the sun and wind. Minute snowflakes from who knows where pelt my cheek.
April 2, 2013
In contrast to the clouds, the snowbank beside the driveway is shrunken and gray, like something left too long at the back of the fridge.
April 1, 2013
Rain just past, the gray sky brightens above the eastern and western horizons. A titmouse descends singing into the lilac.
March 31, 2013
Where yesterday the hillside was mostly white, now it’s mostly brown, and the dawn chorus is twice as loud with the addition of one robin.
March 30, 2013
The first phoebe is finally back, chanting his name in the barnyard. Marcescent leaves of a scarlet oak glow orange, back-lit by the sun.
March 29, 2013
Overcast and cold. An agitation of nuthatches at the edge of the woods, and somewhere beyond, the thin, high whistle of a tree sparrow.
March 28, 2013
In the mud bowl of the old robin’s nest that the wind blew out of the cedar tree, a fresh dusting of snow. The cardinal’s monotonous chant.