Ten blackbirds fly over without stopping. The soft songs of juncos: are they pining for their north woods? It can’t be long now.
Dave Bonta
April 6, 2011
Cold. The fat daffodil buds sag on their stalks. Will this be a year without a spring? Will warblers return to find a sleeping forest?
April 5, 2011
The porch is sleek with blown rain. Just past dawn I glimpse a small hawk circling low over the trees—long-tailed accipiter, a dark cross.
April 4, 2011
Kinglets move through the birches. I think of their statelets: hidden expandable nests, clutch that weighs as much as the bird that laid it.
April 3, 2011
I’m enjoying the stillness: that great word that reminds us that sound too is a form of motion. But the shadows do move. A crow calls.
April 2, 2011
A mourning dove skimming the treetops flies off toward the northeast, the whistle of its wingbeats like something from the age of steam.
April 1, 2011
Snow for April 1, fine, but I want something crazier: egg thief in a tree, yellow dwarf for a sun, a message in lights from every false god.
March 31, 2011
Three inches of sticky snow have turned the trees white and intricate, with many moving parts: sparrows, robins, a blackbird’s creak.
March 30, 2011
Overcast. A train whistle coming from the wrong direction. The resident naturalist stops at the corner of the wall, gets out her hand lens.
March 29, 2011
A pair of ducks fly silently through the trees: the mallards who return every spring to nest on the mountain, a mile from the nearest pond.
March 28, 2011
A little less cold, a little less clear as we inch toward the warm mud of April. The cardinal pays her morning visit to her glassy rival.
March 27, 2011
The rapid scrabble of claws on bark, that waterfall sound. Three chasing squirrels spiral down the big locust like an animated barber pole.
March 26, 2011
Clear and bracing, like a shot of vodka. The thirteen cattail heads beside the springhouse sway gently in the dawn light.
March 25, 2011
Heavy frost, and the bare dirt in the garden has crystallized into icy turrets. Motes of snow float past, backlit by the sun. Robin song.