Saturday April 18, 2015

Dave Bonta April 18, 2015

Flies and butterflies, gnats and gnatcatchers, blue-headed vireo, paper wasp. The towhee in the lilac bush starts his song with a stutter.

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The fog is a bad magician. Each time it lifts, it reveals the same trees and snow, the same skinny squirrels, the same two crows jeering. …

‪Another too-warm morning: late April without the warblers. Three dried oak leaves launched into flight by the wind circle like doomed hawks.‬ …

Through driving snow, our neighbor is out plowing the road. The plow's hydraulics whine like a sled dog. Tire chains scrabble at the ice. …

Yesterday's snow on every branch? A filigree of drips sparkling in the sun. Periodic crashes from the back of the house as icicles let go. …

Snow falling in large, wet clusters: I watch the woods whiten. Small clouds of powder in a multiflora rosebush as snowbirds dart in and out. …

First light. The silence is broken by a rustle in the leaves, followed a little later by the hollow sound of a creek stone being flipped. …

Just audible over the wind: a junco's chitter. Leaves lift off from the newly melted forest floor and join a harried flock of snowflakes. …

Late morning, and the gray gives way to deepest blue. Treetops clack like rib-bone castanets, gleaming in the sun. …

Snowflakes make the wind visible. Who knew the yard was home to such complex currents? The anxious calls of a nuthatch on the far shore. …

Cloud-bellies at sunrise: white, yellow, blue-gray, mauve. We're back to cold weather, and only the house finch sounds happy to be alive. …

The Morning Porch/Patio