The sun’s slow fadeout. Two male cardinals travel together to the stream and back again—flashes of color in an increasingly monochrome yard.
2019
March 7, 2019
Overcast and cold. One by one the birds fly down to the stream, hop around, drink, fly up, and sing. Snowflakes blow past. A tree groans.
March 6, 2019
Overcast and bitter cold. A Carolina wren comes out from under the house and rummages in the dry leaves behind the oil tanks.
March 5, 2019
Sunny and cold. A titmouse call takes me back to that time one nested outside my window and woke me each morning like an elfin rooster.
March 4, 2019
Snow blowing off the trees mingles with fresh flakes. Cloud shadow subsumes tree shadows like a malnourished rabbit reabsorbing her young.
March 3, 2019
Sky and ground both flat white. A squirrel missing a quarter of her tail is fossicking through the snow, ignored by a high-speed chipmunk.
March 2, 2019
Bird tracks in the snow next to the house like meandering lines of cuneiform verse, breaking off at odd points where something took flight.
March 1, 2019
Something has been ripping into the old hornet’s nest on the porch ceiling: pieces of its gray paper litter the fresh snow. A wren flies in.
February 28, 2019
Cold air, bright sun. A song sparrow in the barberry bush sings continuously for nearly a minute—manic in a way I’ve never heard before.
February 27, 2019
As if in answer to the stream’s soprano babble, the bugling of migrant geese, their V breaking and rewriting itself as they pass overhead.
February 26, 2019
As the temperature climbs above freezing, the icy surface of the snowpack loses its sheen, clouding over like the eye of a dead fish.
February 25, 2019
After a night of high winds, the forest has several new squeaks and groans, but my light-weight chair hasn’t moved. I sit down warily.
February 24, 2019
Late morning and the rain stops, the fog lifts to reveal the same snow-clad mountain as before. The distant sound of an engine being revved.
February 23, 2019
Overcast. A song sparrow’s song. Chipmunks break their habitual solitude to dash across the hard snowpack, fighting, looking for mates.