Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof.
Plummer’s Hollow
9/13/2024
6:24. The cardinal sings a few times and falls silent. 6:26. The whippoorwill calls a few times and falls silent. 6:29. The Carolina wren starts up.
9/12/2024
Cool and still with murky sunlight and yellow leaves dropping one by one. From the north and east, the guttural hum of industry—that drone note.
9/11/2024
Another gorgeous, cool morning. Two ravens fly over at sunrise, croaking. A phoebe in the distance is just audible under the usual cascade of wren song.
9/10/2024
Clear and still. A chipmunk chips from her hole in the rock wall beside the porch, getting a much more resonant sound than her rival up in the woods.
9/9/2024
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft call.
9/8/2024
Breezy and cool at mid-morning. A blue jay’s rusty croon in the crown of an oak. The plop of dropped acorns.
9/7/2024
A soft, steady rain at dawn. At sunrise, a hummingbird buzzes in to sip from the jewelweeds under the porch roof dripline.
9/6/2024
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome.
9/5/2024
A dawn too cold for crickets, and still except where a squirrel makes a branch tremble. From the top of a black locust, a hairy woodpecker’s nasal chirps.
9/4/2024
Another cold morning. The sun through thin cirrus casts a wan light over the clouds of blossoming snakeroot.
9/3/2024
The coldest morning since May, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the east—the slightly quieter direction. The Carolina wren duets with beeping quarry trucks.
9/2/2024
Crystal-clear and cool. A screech owl quavers in answer to a distant trill as sun floods the treetops. Autumn is here.
9/1/2024
Clear and cool. I watch a gray squirrel descend a tree, search its memory/the ground for a walnut, dig it up, and find a secluded spot under the lilac to chisel it open.