Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
The rising sun appears through new holes in the forest understory just after it tops the ridge. Crows and jays are in an uproar over a young peregrine falcon, who hangs around for a couple of hours, periodically giving chase to its most obnoxious persecutors until they all find better things to do elsewhere.
Warm and breezy at sunrise. One katydid is still calling, as if reluctant to see the end of what could be the katydids’ last big party night of the year. Two yellow walnut leaves land on my laptop.
Soft sunlight through high atmospheric haze. Dew drips from the roof. The forest glows orange and yellow as spring peepers call from the leaf litter.
Blue holes open and close in the clouds. Gray squirrels continue to sound the alarm for a long-gone hawk as the tulip sapling in my yard dances in the wind.
Hard, steady rain since the wee hours, but the crows still show up to yell from the top of the tallest tree at what would be sunrise.
Sun through thin clouds at mid-morning. A suppressed burble of wren-song from the woods’ edge. Yellow leaves festoon the reddening stiltgrass in the yard.
Clear but not as cold. The shadows of three silent, low-flying geese cross the porch as a larger flock to the south provides the soundtrack of goose music.
Clear, cold, and loud with highway noise due to an inversion layer. Dead-center in my view from the porch, I spot a mile-a-minute vine in the lilac that I somehow missed and walk down to rip it out, blue berries spilling into the weeds.
The coldest morning of the autumn so far, but no frost. Pileated woodpeckers yammer in the distance as the sun climbs through golden leaves toward the moon’s thin grin.
More clouds than sun, with walnut trees undressing in the wind, and the leaves on the porch turning over like restless sleepers. The periodic bang of a walnut landing on the back roof is loud as a gunshot.
Overcast at dawn. A great-horned owl calls in the distance. A train horn at the Plummer Hollow crossing blows a major-key chord with a passing resemblance to the old Windows start-up music.
Cold and clear before dawn. I lean forward to tie my boots in the light of the half moon, then sit back in deep shadow. A barred owl calls once, twice. Orion lies on his side above the ridge—a hunter half out of bed on this, the opening day of deer season.
Breezy and warmish with a few thin, high clouds. A fly walks slowly across the open document on my laptop. From up in the woods, the plaintive call of a spring peeper already attuning himself for next spring, as his body prepares for months of dormancy under the leaf duff.
Heavily overcast skies prolong the lingering darkness till well past sunrise, but eventually the duetting screech owls and the all-night migrants softly calling from the woods’ edge fall silent, the crows disperse, and the wren, one imagines, must be off busying himself with matters of great import.