The low cloud ceiling is a tabula rasa for the arabesques of chimney swifts. A high-pitched rasping in the trees–some insomniac katydid.
Dave Bonta
In the light breeze, one clump of cattails waves out of sync; the sound of chewing. A few perfunctory phrases from a red-eyed vireo.
Out around 9:00, in time to hear the dog-day cicadas start up. If it weren’t for cicadas, how would we know what the sun sounds like?
A bristly white caterpillar on the freshly painted white porch railing. The sky too is white, and the lawn with its banks of snakeroot.
Halfway up the ridge, the hectoring alarm-calls of a squirrel. A few seconds later, a deer joins in: explosive snorts. The sun comes out.
Below the porch, a generic chirp from a warbler of indeterminate species. I remember the Central American term for such skulkers: chipes.
Between showers, a shallow, orange V careens through the cherry’s dead limbs. Mating craneflies? No, a large beetle with orange elytra.
The fog reveals as much as it hides. Who knew the trees held so many spiderwebs? The birds are mostly quiet now; it’s cricket spring.
A horse fly—rare visitor—rides my parents’ car down the road, then follows me onto the porch. It takes two flyswatter blows to do her in.
What wind is this, disturbing the stifling tranquility of the morning? The cherry tree wags its thick webwormed finger. A sudden downpour.
Dawn fog lifts and pauses, so it’s clear to a height of ten feet, then white, then the crescent moon. A red-bellied woodpecker’s slow chant.
Something stirs in the silky dogwood across the road. I stroll over: blue berries, a warbler dressed for travel in its yellow-green suit.
A hummingbird defending her patch of soapwort buzzes an ovenbird, who walks back and forth on the cherry branches in his big pink feet.
Thin fog. Now that the phoebes have left, their shy cousins the pewees have come out of the woods, and herald each sunrise in a slow drawl.