The first clear sky in days. In the deep, holiday silence, each bird call sounds distinct, as if it comes from a far-off time or place.
May 2021
May 30, 2021
Rainy and cold. An indigo bunting and a phoebe clash briefly in the air above the stream and retire to neighboring walnut branches.
May 29, 2021
Mid-morning, and the rain has dwindled into cold mizzle. In the marsh at the bottom of the meadow, the spring peepers start back up.
May 28, 2021
Dawn stealing influence from the just-past-full moon. The whip-poor-will awakening the catbird.
May 27, 2021
It’s so clear I can see the tiniest specks of aerial flotsam drifting past the sun. A cuckoo switches to his most plaintive call.
May 26, 2021
A mid-air tangle between a phoebe and a wood pewee ends with the latter calling once from a walnut branch and flying back into the woods.
May 25, 2021
Brightening sky. I watch a chipmunk on the wall beside the porch making her “chuck” call, so loud—using the stone as a resonator.
May 24, 2021
Waiting for rain, everything sounds like an augury—catbird, chipmunk, great-crested flycatcher—and just before the first drops, that hush.
May 23, 2021
The dame’s-rocket is at its height; my overgrown front yard is the equal of any garden. The catbird seems to concur.
May 22, 2021
The black cherry blossoms are already fading, and the sun is going from dandelion-yellow to dandelion seedhead-white. Black-billed cuckoo.
May 21, 2021
Cool morning. The melancholy sweetness of a wood thrush song. At the woods’ edge, the small black cherry has gone to bloom.
May 20, 2021
Mid-morning and it’s already hot. The black locusts—last to leaf out—have a fresh green fuzz. A carpenter bee inspects the roof.
May 19, 2021
A nocturnal visitor has dug up four of my herbs, tunneling into the compost. Below the porch, a least flycatcher, handsome in his eye rings.
May 18, 2021
Even on a morning this incomparable I can be squinting at my phone and nearly miss the sun on a hummingbird’s back.