It’s not my imagination; the bluebird saves his best song for the bluest skies. But this morning, even a passing plane sounds inspired.
Dave Bonta
March 9, 2012
Yesterday’s insects have been replaced again by wandering snowflakes. A vulture flaps to gain altitude, its head red and garish as a wound.
March 8, 2012
Warmth without shadows, the gossip of goldfinches like a single bright thread. The rabbit doesn’t chance a dash across the yard.
March 7, 2012
Large gnats drift back and forth in front of the porch and a fly wanders the rim of my laptop. Two Cooper’s hawks chatter up in the woods.
March 6, 2012
Home after a week away, what’s changed? The song sparrows are back, ebullient as ever, and the dead cherry has shed another shaggy limb.
February 28, 2012
The Morning Porch is on hiatus until March 6. Feel free to leave your own front-porch observations in the comments.
February 27, 2012
A downy woodpecker gleans breakfast from the dead cherry, chirping between taps. A mackerel sky. The smell of thawed earth.
February 26, 2012
Pileated woodpeckers forage on all sides, hammering, drumming, cackling, whooping. I feel as if I’m surrounded by a troupe of insane clowns.
February 25, 2012
Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy.
February 24, 2012
Rain has erased the last patches of snow. The lilac bush gives birth to a cardinal, a wren, four white-crowned sparrows and a chipmunk.
February 23, 2012
A killdeer’s song drifts down from high overhead, and to the south, the piping of a ragged flock of geese struggling against the high winds.
February 22, 2012
Dawn. Three deer become two, become three again. The sound of squirrel teeth on black walnut shell—that harsh madman’s whisper.
February 21, 2012
Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.
February 20, 2012
Querulous cries of a raccoon, like lost notes from a soprano clarinet. Two pileateds hammer for their breakfast—an arrhythmic percussion.