Friday March 22, 2019

Dave Bonta March 22, 2019

The banks of moss above the road shine bright after last night’s rain. Two chickadees sing their spring songs as snowflakes fill the air.

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Overcast and cold. Every few minutes, another boom as our neighbors sight in their rifles. A wren and a nuthatch sound mildly irritated. …

Cloudy but bright. I notice many of the pits in the old snow, melted down by oak leaves, have acquired new snow and a second, upstairs leaf. …

The hiss of the wind. Oak leaves scud above the treetops in one direction while juncos and sparrows move through the weeds in the other. …

A huge number of crows hanging out in the treetops at the woods' edge—not mobbing anything, just being crows, arguing, sharing, kvetching. …

Blank white sky. The woods are quiet except for an occasional chickadee. From over at the neighbors', the labored putting of an old engine. …

A pileated woodpecker foraging near the ground suddenly flees yelling into the treetops. Several nearby juncos take off too, just in case. …

A maze of squirrel and sparrow tracks between ice-covered tufts of grass glittering in the sun. Down in the valley, a siren starts up. …

The sun rising through the trees off to the southeast seems so much less ambitious than last night's moon. Goldfinches' desultory chirps. …

Dawn light turns everything briefly to gold: house, trees, the three deer that run a short way into the woods and stop, nostrils flaring. …

Blue overhead, and the frost so heavy, it looks like a light snow. From the barnyard, the voices of hunters returning with their first kill. …

Soft-focus shadows from the high, thin clouds. Chickadees are calling chirree-chirrup, a car door slams, a crow goes yelling into the sun. …

The snow gives them away—a crunch of footsteps, the unambiguous shapes: five turkeys 150 feet away, going single-file through the laurel. …

"Crepuscular": such a weird word, conjuring up ancient forests, twisted mossy forms. Not this dawn, filled with the noise of trucks. …

The Morning Porch/Patio