Still bitter cold, but the wind has died. Clouds redden. A phoebe snags breakfast from the bark of a tree like a nuthatch.
Year: 2022
Bitter cold at sunrise. The usual singers are subdued, except for one dove. The occasional bang of heartwood split by ice.
Winter’s back, with snow on the ground and more coming down. Juncos twitter happily. An ambulance goes wailing through the gap.
Heavy clouds except where the sun glimmers through. Snowflakes. The robin’s bright warble.
Brightness fated to be brief: already, gray-bottomed cumulus clouds are sailing in like galleons, dividing the blue between them.
Under a uniformly gray sky the same titmouse has been singing the same monotonous notes, I realize, for the past 45 minutes.
Ten-thirty and the promised rain finally begins to whisper in the dry leaves—a mountain’s worth of hush drowning out all distant engines.
Weak sun through thickening clouds. A robin and his echo. The metallic taps of a titmouse opening a sunflower seed against a drainpipe.
Deep blue sky; two degrees above freezing. As the sun climbs out of the trees, the morning chorus dies down until it’s only the Carolina wren.
Cold and gloomy—classic March weather for the equinox. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the treetops, underneath which two squirrels chase, oblivious.
Humid and cool. The sun keeps finding new holes in the clouds. The woodpeckers keep drumming.
Sun climbing through the trees into a cloudless sky. A second male phoebe has joined the first, which means three times more phoebeing.
Rain tapping on the porch roof. Robin song echoes off the hillside. From down-hollow, the sound of a crow mob.
Only one, tiny patch of snow remains in view, sheltering on the north side of a laurel thicket. A cowbird’s liquid note.