Bright sun. The damp ground glistens like a salamander. A jet goes over—the first I’ve heard in a while.
Month: March 2020
Rain past, the hollow is full of birds. Fast moving clouds. A Carolina wren sings exultantly through a high gust of wind.
Sun through thin clouds. A flash of red as a cardinal emerges from bathing in the stream. Two ravens croak back and forth, high and low.
Overcast and still. Two downy woodpeckers a quarter mile apart have found dead trees that, when hammered, ring at precisely the same pitch.
Overcast. A field sparrow’s ascending note. In the dead grass below the stone wall, an otherwise motionless garter snake tastes the air.
From up in the woods, the kak-kak-kak call of a Cooper’s hawk. The first question mark butterfly lands among dead leaves and vanishes.
In the deep blue, the only spots of white, high overhead, are swans: two large Vs tacking this way and that, trailing their piccolo notes.
Cloudless and cool. I wonder idly about the target shooter a couple of miles away, their preferred pronouns. A fly walks the rim of my mug.
Weak sun. Squirrels rummage through the dead grass, studiously ignoring each other, pretending they’re not really after buried treasure.
Her shadow draws my eye to the pileated woodpecker flying as silently as a pickpocket’s hand from one trunk to the next. A flash of crimson.
The waxy surfaces of laurel and rhododendron leaves glitter in the sun. A bluebird sits silently on a branch, waiting for insects to stir.
Rain thickening. Puddles in the driveway acquire something like feathers, as if the water is already preparing for its return trip.
Unseasonably warm. A bluebottle fly descends a porch column as slowly as a sleepwalker. A bit of cattail down drifts back and forth.
So clear and bright I can see a strand of spider silk still flying from the eaves. The rumble of our neighbor’s truck breaks the silence.