An intensely green lushness makes an orphan out of the brown pile of juniper cuttings at the woods’ edge—last winter’s one spot of green. At 7:10, in the pouring rain, the first cicada starts up.
Dave Bonta
Rain at dawn tapering off into another patter alongside the red-eyed vireo’s. Wood thrushes sing back and forth. From deep in the lilac, a house finch lets loose.
Breezy and cool, with the sun guttering in cirrus. Over the course of an hour, I swat an astonishing diversity of small flies and gnats. It’s good to feel wanted, I suppose.
Breezy and cool. A brown moth flutters into the last of the dame’s-rocket. Sunlight glints on the isinglass wings of a cicada heading for the treetops.
Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
Everything wet and shining as the clouds move out. A towhee flies up to a low limb and rubs the caterpillar in his bill against the bark to remove its bristles.
Occasional glimpses of sun. The first periodical cicadas began singing at sunrise, and by midmorning it’s a kind of high, ceaseless static—as if they’re relaying transmissions from the cosmos.
Occasional glimpses of sun. The first periodical cicadas began singing at sunrise, and by midmorning it’s a kind of high, ceaseless static—as if they’re relaying transmissions from the cosmos.
Faint sun through an ash-white sky. I picture a history of human civilization from the point-of-view of periodical cicadas, emerging from the ground every 17 years to scream.
Rain at sunrise. A flower longhorn beetle takes refuge under the porch, landing beside my mug. The crash of a falling limb.
Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.
Cool and humid. A phoebe dives for an insect and gives it to a fledgling sitting on a walnut branch. In the shadows of the trees, white masses of mountain laurel blossoms.
Another cool, cloudless morning. The springhouse tulip tree is in bloom, looking more like a lotus tree: fat yellow flowers seemingly taken from a lake and lifted high into the blue.
A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.