Monday March 03, 2014

Dave Bonta March 3, 2014

Fresh from drinking out of the cold stream, a chickadee swipes its bill rapidly against a twig, then goes to join the others in the birches.

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Rain from a named storm seems special, like strands of hair from someone famous. Two spring peepers are calling, and faintly, the phoebe. …

Out early, I listen to barred owls, watch the pulsing light of a glowworm crossing the walk like a satellite on an exceptionally low orbit. …

The female hummingbird tries to get nectar out of my red iPad cover again, repeatedly probing the end of the fold, my fingers inches away. …

A squirrel explores the woods' edge, running along the underside of a locust limb, nosing the ground, going to the very top of a dead tree. …

The stiltgrass stems are beginning to redden. In the shadows of the trees, funnel spider webs still sag with their night's haul of dew. …

Were there really just two of them? Now every yellow birch leaf trembling in the breeze looks like another migrant warbler. …

Three butterfly milkweed pods have split open, and dangle clouds of down. From the neighbors', the howl and mutter of a weed whacker. …

The guys arrive promptly at 8:00 o'clock to put a new roof on the porch. We stand around talking for 20 minutes about lead-core bullets. …

Due to the drought, the goldenrod display is subdued this year—but birch are turning three weeks early. September will have its yellow. …

Some small hawk has been calling since first light, hidden in the treetops: soft brief cries, soon joined by a chorus of its enemies. …

Clear, cold, the kind of morning where you can hear for miles, noisy with cars, trucks, trains, jets, and chipmunks standing their ground. …

The Morning Porch/Patio