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.
Dave Bonta
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.
Cold but clear. Two crows are arguing: the one caws, the other makes that strange scraping rattle, like a sound effect from a horror film.
Thick fog blanks everything but the noise from the highway—this could be New Jersey. Rain beads on the branches of the ornamental cherry.
The snow is gone (again) and the first phoebe circles the barn and shed, expressing his satisfaction with the location, location, location.
Rain overnight has reduced our Good Friday snow to a lacy patchwork in the woods, so much cleaner and paler than the old snows of winter.
Clear and cold. A song sparrow sings half again faster than usual—”Hip hip hurrah boys, spring is here!”—as if he really means it this time.
At dawn, I watch the moonlight fading into the snow like the light going out of the eyes of a dying creature. The gurgle of the stream.
Easter Sunday dawns clear and cold. The yard is stippled with fresh tracks. Quiet except for a mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker.
Five inches of fresh snow, the kind that clings to every twig. I catch a movement up in the woods: a deer raises its tail to take a shit.
The wind has smashed my chair, so I carry my coffee up behind the barn to watch the woodcock circling in the dawn sky. A satellite flares.