Dark and rainy. Peepers call from the marsh, and the half-leafed-out lilac seems to glow, achingly green against the brown woods.
April 2014
4/29/2014
Two ravens in the rain. One flies off to the south and the other lands on a dead branch. It breaks, and the bird flies off to the north.
4/28/2014
On the myrtle flowers, nothing but native bees. The sun fades. A black-throated green warbler calls, switching between its two buzzy songs.
4/27/2014
On a cold, clear morning, the calls of birds seem almost crystalline. To say nothing of the whistle of a westbound freight…
4/26/2014
In a gust of wind, one dead leaf dances too crazily: a question mark butterfly. It rests with its orange wings open to the sun.
4/25/2014
Two male flickers fighting over the dead elm and its den-hole joust in the garden, jabbing and feinting with their long bills.
4/24/2014
A cloudless blue sky. It’s hard to tell the pale elm flowers from the sunlight shining on bare twigs and branches. A dove calls and calls.
4/23/2014
Cold winds stir the leaves on the forest floor in lieu of anything better. A towhee seeks the shelter of the lilac for her own rummaging.
4/22/2014
The myrtle that has taken over half my yard is in bloom: a scatter of blue. At the woods’ edge, two blue-headed vireos compare songs.
4/21/2014
Sunny and warm. A goldfinch drops down among the black currant bushes with their half-open leaves to dip her bill into the sky-blue stream.
4/20/2014
A Chinook helicopter flies low over the trees, with its twin rotors like a pair of malignant insects mating in flight, gravid with soldiers.
4/19/2014
A red-tailed hawk spirals high on a thermal over the powerline. When I stand up, a raven takes off behind the house—the noise of its wings.
4/18/2014
The flickers that have been hanging around the yard copulate next to the old den hole in the elm snag—the one a black snake raided in 2012.
4/17/2014
A single-prop plane circles high over the valley for more than an hour—flying lesson? A missing child? The dry rattle of chipping sparrows.