When the clouds move off, an orbweaver’s web appears in the corner of a porch balustrade, shimmering as it pulses in the breeze.
Plummer’s Hollow
Writing on the porch for a while, I am confronted, every time I look up, by three bracken fronds in my yard that have already turned yellow, like needlessly complex skeletons of fish.
A gnatcatcher is searching for breakfast on the undersides of leaves. A redstart lands on the porch railing and cocks her head at me.
Just past sunrise, a clearing wind. I look up from the Eastern Europe of my book to flame-bellied clouds, the forest all astir.
Clear and cool. A bright yellow goldfinch circles the yard still in shadow, chattering like a bearer of sunlit news.
Overcast. Random knocks from an unseen woodpecker. A white-breasted nuthatch’s nervous call punctuates a wood pewee’s song.
Insects drift back and forth in the cool air (45F/7C). An animal track through the dew-drenched yard heads straight under the house.
Cloudy and cool. I’m still mulling over yesterday’s funeral. From the back of the house, the dull thumps of a towhee attacking its reflection.
Three squirrels are having a to-do on the porch as if I’m not here, running back and forth under my chair. A deer in the driveway turns her head to watch.
A front blew in overnight and now it’s gorgeous and cool. Strong sunlight infiltrates the forest. The common bird calls sound symphonic.
Overcast and cool. A red-bellied woodpecker lands on a rotten maple, witters softly and turns her head, listening for the telltale stirrings of breakfast.
A black-and-white warbler probes the cracks between the floorboards for soft bits of grit and hair to line its nest, high in a walnut tree.*
*Or not. See here.
Treetops rusty with sun. Worm-eating warbler—or is it a chipping sparrow? That dry rattle. A pair of mating craneflies goes unsteadily past.
Clear and cool. A gnatcatcher scoops a caterpillar off a walnut leaf and swipes it against a branch three times before swallowing.