The sun catches a tiny, white spider ballooning past the porch on a long strand of silk. It touches down in the bergamot, among bumblebees.
Month: July 2021
Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.
Stifling humidity. With so many birds done nesting now, the catbird is the lone singer, echoing like a musician in an empty club.
Dawn mediated by fog is slower, but it gets to the same, obvious spectacle in the end. And the usual wren has something to say about it.
Absorbed in a book of poetry from Uruguay, I forget to notice anything except for the high-pitched, nasal cries of a fledgling crow.
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
Overcast and cool. A Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods, eliciting a response from what sounds like a juvenile—that nearly universal whine.
Brief rain showers, one after another. A goldfinch lands sideways on a blossoming mullein stalk as if to compare yellows.
The dawn chorus is full of silences now. My leg and I are playing another exciting game of Name that Rash: Chiggers? Poison ivy? No-see-ums?
In the growing heat, a wood pewee flies from perch to perch, singing, circling the house. I feel as if I’m being ensorcelled.
The first bergamots are in bloom, next to the first soapwort. In walnut-tree shade, the permanent shadow of a common yellowthroat’s mask.
Catbird and tanager trading licks. For half a minute, a vagrant sunbeam sets one of the two mullein stalks aglow.
On a dark and cloudy morning, the green of the woods’ edge seems even more intense. The scarlet tanager sounds hoarse with longing.