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.
2023
August 8, 2023
Drizzle in the wind even as the sky brightens. Small patches of blue appear and disappear. A yellow leaf spirals down into the yard.
August 7, 2023
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.
August 6, 2023
A mosquito sings her dark need into my ear. Day advances like a slow machine of squeaking towhees and whirring wrens.
August 5, 2023
Cloudy, but the clouds are paper-thin, so the Carolina wren bobbing on a branch casts a thin shadow.
August 4, 2023
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.
August 3, 2023
An orange moon gone slightly flat hangs in the southwest at dawn. An eight-point buck grazes under the old lilac.
August 2, 2023
My three-year-old tulip tree has extended one last, jaunty new leaf for the season. How tall it has grown on this summer’s thunderstorms! Not to mention all the extra CO2 in the air.
August 1, 2023
Sun glimmering through thin, high clouds. The distant rumble of a train. In the long grass, each drop of dew begins to shine.
July 31, 2023
Rising after the sun, I watch it illuminate section by section the complex structure of a funnel spider web.
July 30, 2023
Clear and cool. A migrant wood thrush calls softly at first light. It’s very still. Then the wrens wake up.
July 29, 2023
White sky with distant crows. The stiltgrass in the meadow is still lying low after a thunderstorm yesterday at dusk.
July 28, 2023
Another cool, humid morning. The hearty laughter of a pileated woodpecker interrupts my scrolling.
July 27, 2023
A wood thrush is singing in the distance. I shoo away the mosquito singing in my ear to listen.