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
4/15/2019
Amid the heavy raindrops, the lighter ghosts of just-melted snowflakes. Treetops sway this way and that. The towhee goes on calling.
4/14/2019
Overcast. Gun shots from over the ridge. A blue-gray gnatcatcher calls from the edge of the blue-gray woods.
4/13/2019
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.
4/12/2019
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.
4/11/2019
The cardinal whose doppelganger lives in the upstairs window taps twice and flies off—just going through the motions. I sneeze at the sun.
4/10/2019
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.
4/9/2019
Sunny and warm. A red-bellied woodpecker chases a flicker out of the woods. The first spring azure butterfly blows past like a leaf.
4/8/2019
A winter wren warbles his spring song beside the springhouse, appropriately enough, where daffodils have just begun to open.
4/7/2019
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.
4/6/2019
Robin song echoes through the fog. My neighbor drives past on the tractor. In the wake of its rumble, a towhee’s eponymous call.
4/5/2019
Rain seasoned with sleet. The trapped balloons hang limply from their dead tree, wrinkled like over-ripe fruit.
4/4/2019
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.
4/3/2019
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.