A towhee seems stuck in rehearsal: Drink! Drink your… Drink! Everything shines. A white-throated sparrow turns its song upside-down.
Dave Bonta
The old dog statue in my front yard is now in its glory: a ring of yellow trumpets, silent save for the occasional muffled buzz.
Clear at sunrise, bright orange spreading across the field. One of the daffodil buds in my yard looks ready to open: a broad yellow seam.
Another gray morning. From behind the house, a field sparrow’s ascending note, like a translation of ruffed grouse drumming into song.
Despite appearances to the contrary—the sky still gray, rain still withheld—spring has come for the titmouse and his one, querulous note.
Gray sky; the smell of rain. Two insomniac screech owls exchange trills. Then the low-frequency thumps of a grouse. An enormous silence.
Behind all the birdsong, I gradually become aware of a metronome I haven’t heard since last fall: a chipmunk clucking up in the woods.
Mid-morning: overcast, 36°F, but the wood frogs are making a ruckus in their eyedropper of a pond. Yellow buds swell on the French lilac.
Somewhere in the fog, a red-winged blackbird, a pair of mourning doves, a robin, a flock of finches. Half an hour later, nothing but rain.
The feral cat is back from wherever it goes for the winter. It crouches on a fallen limb, eyes fixed on the weeds, gathered for the spring.
Back below freezing, and the morning chorus is much more subdued as a result. That missing element of excitement? Flying insects.
At mid-morning, the trill of a screech owl. The sun struggles to shine; blurry shadows appear. A crow flies over quacking like a mallard.
Dad reports that when he went outside around 8:00, a gray fox was sitting in the driveway. They watched each other for more than a minute.
The sky—so much more nuanced and interesting than yesterday’s clear blue! The light—so much blander! A zero-sum game between earth and sky.