Half past midnight in the moonlit forest, a cuckoo tried out the screech owl’s call. This morning, just a red-eyed vireo repeating himself.
Dave Bonta
Goldfinches twitter in the tops of the locusts at sunrise, bright as beacons. A yellow hoverfly watches me from four inches away.
Wood thrush and cardinal song. A male hummingbird chases a silver-spotted skipper off the beebalm, then retreats to a dead branch to preen.
In the yard, the horde of wild garlic heads have begun to rise from their private ruminations and aim their long beaks together at the sky.
It’s hot. A black ichneumon wasp lands on the white porch ceiling and walks into the dark cave of a knothole, translucent wings twitching.
Only when the begging cries of the crow fledglings finally cease do I notice the air’s clarity, golden light glistening on a black birch.
A cuckoo climbs the trunk of the tulip tree, pausing every few inches to search for prey. The dump truck goes by with a rattle and clang.
White sky thin enough for the sun to shine through. The sound of a bear tearing at a log. A ripple of squirrel alarms as a hawk goes past.
Goldfinch in the garden: a coneflower stem breaks under his weight and he moves to another, probing the dark centers for a hint of seed.
A pair of bindweed trumpets side-by-side. Nearby, an Oswego tea plant wrapped in webbing swarms with baby spiders no bigger than asterisks.
A convocation of robins in the tulip tree at the edge of the woods, like pot-bellied businessmen with their self-important tut-tut-tuts.
Fire sirens in the valley. On a beebalm stem, right under the scarlet inflorescence, a beard of spittlebug froth catches the sun.
Strange morning: first a 20-MPH gust of wind out of a clear sky whips the treetops, then the dead cherry beside the porch fills with birds.
A noisy exchange of crow news sets off a pair of yellow-billed cuckoos. A juvenile black bear ambles down the road and into the woods.