Sunday, and one can hear between bursts of oriole song the creaking of wings, the drone of a bumblebee, a deer snorting a quarter-mile off.
Dave Bonta
May 10, 2008
Two myrtle colonies are closing in on what’s left of my lawn. In the grass, the green fists of bracken open complex fingers to the rain.
May 9, 2008
Rain. Have robins always had white spots on the ends of their tails? Yesterday afternoon, four eastern kingbirds in the field—unmistakeable.
May 8, 2008
Rain at dawn. In the half-light, the green is intense. Add the bell-like tones of wood thrushes, and the effect is other-worldly.
May 7, 2008
Behind the lilac, the sounds of a fierce wood thrush altercation. A third thrush lands close by and swipes its bill against the branch.
May 6, 2008
Full leaf-out is still a week or two off. In the green wall of woods across from my porch, the dawn sky leaks through a hundred holes.
May 5, 2008
Bright sunny morning. A hooded warbler bursts from the white lilac; for a moment I think it’s a yellowthroat with his mask on wrong.
May 4, 2008
The bleeding-heart I bought yesterday, still in its pot, pulls in the first hummingbird of the year: shimmery red gorget, grotesque blooms.
May 3, 2008
The air smells of rain. A large robber fly buzzes into my weed garden and lands on the underside of a dame’s-rocket leaf.
May 2, 2008
Two Jurassic-like things, both of them “great”: the call of a great-crested flycatcher, and seconds later, a great blue heron in flight.
May 1, 2008
Roar of the quarry in my left ear, burble of a wren in my right, and in the front yard a catbird sits in the lilac, silent, head swiveling.
April 30, 2008
Botanically speaking, I’m sitting in Europe, staring at the New World. Over there it’s still mostly brown, and the birds sing more quietly.
April 29, 2008
Cold. A chipmunk’s steady tick. When I go back in, a half-dozen cherry petals precede me—random dance steps on the cherry-stained floor.
April 28, 2008
Morning like a tinted photo. Wood thrush song, the susurration of rain, a greenish-yellow haze of oak blossoms merging with the clouds.