Saturday March 28, 2015

Dave Bonta March 28, 2015

A dusting of snow. Three song sparrows are trying to out-sing each other, and the tall black locust at the woods’ edge creaks with ice.

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Two degrees below freezing. The sun is a bright smear in what could be a snow sky. A chickadee sings seemingly to itself. …

The sound of chainsaws from over the ridge. A chipmunk races up the big tulip poplar and returns to earth along the first, hung-down limb. …

Alarm calls of jays give way to crows; the crows to a raven. With each corvid, the cry comes from higher in the blue—and closer to the bone. …

Between bitter gusts of wind, I hear the calls of juncos and nuthatches, chickadees and titmice, a song sparrow singing in the ditch. …

A titmouse taps in the rain gutter, its absurd crest buffeted by the wind. Scattered snowflakes dart this way and that as if on a mad hunt. …

Thirty thousand feet overhead, a south-bound jet turns to the southwest. Its boomerang-shaped contrail drifts slowly over the ridge. …

An immature redtail studies the ground from a low limb, drops into the weeds and comes up empty. High overhead, three Vs of tundra swans. …

Warm and wet—almost a March day, were it not for that rustle the rain makes on leaves, still crisp and curled in the first blush of death. …

At 7:30 a raven flaps over, cronking. Ten minutes later, a maelstrom of crows and ravens in the woods beside the powerline: fresh gut pile. …

Halfway up the ridge, a flashlight bobs through the trees, stops, goes out. Then the rustling thuds of hooves in dry leaves. Then silence. …

Thick fog prolongs the dawn light for hours. A screech owl is answered by a pileated woodpecker, dirge giving way to second-line ululation. …

White sky, white noise from the highway over the ridge. The goldfinches wake all at once, a querulous babble of squeaky wheels. …

The Morning Porch/Patio