A kestrel lands on a limb at the woods’ edge, looks around and flies off, skimming the ground. The field sparrow barely pauses his song.
April 2019
April 15, 2019
Amid the heavy raindrops, the lighter ghosts of just-melted snowflakes. Treetops sway this way and that. The towhee goes on calling.
April 14, 2019
Overcast. Gun shots from over the ridge. A blue-gray gnatcatcher calls from the edge of the blue-gray woods.
April 13, 2019
Two spicebushes side by side, one still bare, the other in full yellow fuzz. Up in the woods, the soft song of the first blue-headed vireo.
April 12, 2019
Cold at mid-morning, warm by noon: every hour I take off another layer. The blurry spot on my glasses turns out to be two midges, mating.
April 11, 2019
The cardinal whose doppelganger lives in the upstairs window taps twice and flies off—just going through the motions. I sneeze at the sun.
April 10, 2019
Sunny but cooler. The liquid note of a cowbird in the yard. A question mark butterfly careens around the house and collides with my shoe.
April 9, 2019
Sunny and warm. A red-bellied woodpecker chases a flicker out of the woods. The first spring azure butterfly blows past like a leaf.
April 8, 2019
A winter wren warbles his spring song beside the springhouse, appropriately enough, where daffodils have just begun to open.
April 7, 2019
Mid-morning, and it’s already too warm for a sweater. I count six, seven, eight bird calls blending into one—except for the crow’s off note.
April 6, 2019
Robin song echoes through the fog. My neighbor drives past on the tractor. In the wake of its rumble, a towhee’s eponymous call.
April 5, 2019
Rain seasoned with sleet. The trapped balloons hang limply from their dead tree, wrinkled like over-ripe fruit.
April 4, 2019
Squirrels sound the predator alarm, and a song sparrow in the lilac stays motionless for minutes, until I’m half-convinced it’s just a burl.
April 3, 2019
The dead are restless, through no fault of their own: last year’s leaves shuffled about by the wind. But the sun is strong. A phoebe calls.