Sunrise filling every cloud’s belly with pink as the Carolina wren trills over and over—once for each cloud, it seems.
Month: August 2023
A mosquito rests on the arm of my Adirondack chair, watching the sunrise. A hummingbird surprised by a sudden movement buzzes toward me rather than away.
Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
At ten minutes till sunrise, the first hummingbird buzzes in to the orange touch-me-nots. A wood thrush calls from the woods’ edge, but doesn’t sing.
Sun in the treetops. A Carolina wren keeps answering a flicker, as if trying to master its call. Tree crickets. A train horn.
Another brief shower as the sun almost breaks through. A wood pewee answers his own question. I count the yellowing bracken fronds in my yard.
Before the first birds, a thin, gaping moon. A last katydid stopping mid-creak. The whine of tires on the highway over the ridge.
It’s raining and I’m mesmerized by the radar map, its blue and purple blobs. When the downpour begins to abate, the first thing I hear is the twittering of goldfinches.
Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
Showers intermittent as stragglers in a race. This morning’s porch may stretch into the afternoon, as long as my claps keep up with the mosquitoes.
A mosquito sings her dark need into my ear. Day advances like a slow machine of squeaking towhees and whirring wrens.
Cloudy, but the clouds are paper-thin, so the Carolina wren bobbing on a branch casts a thin shadow.
Cool, humid and overcast. A pair of hummingbirds sit side by side on a bare twig, the male rising and hovering behind the female every few seconds to copulate with a decorousness one might not have expected from such fierce birds.