Rain and fog and the ground white with slush. I try to remember the last time I saw a rabbit.
February 2023
February 27, 2023
Sun through thin clouds; a quiet morning. Three chipmunks, one after another, cross the yard and go under my porch. Either someone’s in heat, or they’re plotting to overthrow me.
February 26, 2023
Daffodils are out of the ground around the old dog statue, the surrounding yard moldy-looking from the light frost. A distant bluebird.
February 25, 2023
A quiet gurgling from the springs on either side of my yard. Bands of light and darkness in the east. The sun pops out from behind a tree.
February 24, 2023
Overcast with bright openings and the white noise of wind, raising the dead leaves once again, making them fly.
February 23, 2023
Mist rises from yesterday’s half inch of icy snow. A robin briefly joins the dawn chorus. The front-garden chipmunk returns from the woods with bulging cheeks.
February 22, 2023
Just enough thinning of clouds for a classic, red-in-the-morning wash of mauve in the east, where quarry trucks are loud with their first loads.
February 21, 2023
Interval of sun on a rainy morning—the forest shines and steams. The distant yammering of a pileated. The interstate’s whine.
February 20, 2023
Mid-morning, a lid of clouds slowly closes over the east. Caroling juncos fall silent. The wind picks up.
February 19, 2023
It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest.
February 18, 2023
Sun blazing through the trees illuminates lost snowflakes, miles from the nearest cloud. A chipmunk with hibernation insomnia races up the driveway.
February 17, 2023
Wind and rain. In the gray-brown woods, two silent pileated woodpeckers flap from tree to tree, wings like a revelation in black and white.
February 16, 2023
No sign of the sun after a lurid dawn—the forecasted rain has its P.R. down. I can smell it. I listen for the first drops through a torrent of birdsong.
February 15, 2023
High clouds yellow with sunrise appear to have some business off to the east. A downy woodpecker on a dead locust limb fires off a blast beat.