Sun climbing through the trees into a cloudless sky. A second male phoebe has joined the first, which means three times more phoebeing.
Plummer’s Hollow
Rain tapping on the porch roof. Robin song echoes off the hillside. From down-hollow, the sound of a crow mob.
Only one, tiny patch of snow remains in view, sheltering on the north side of a laurel thicket. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Sun through thin clouds—a milky light. A phoebe is making the rounds, chanting his call at every past nesting spot: barn, shed, garage…
Sunrise reddens the western ridge and its whine of traffic. Cardinal song. With my last sip of tea, the sun strikes my face.
10F/-12C but the wind has mostly died. The plastic flamingo leans only slightly askew in the snowy garden. Patches of blue converge overhead.
Snow falling fast in silence. A song sparrow pipes up with what generations of birders have heard as “Hip hip hurrah, boys, spring is here!”
Clear everywhere except where the sun rises pink, orange and yellow, heralded by small woodpeckers with loud, locust-wood drums.
Yesterday’s snow glitters between the shadows of trees. To the winter-long harangues of cardinal, titmouse and Carolina wren, add one phoebe.
Snow. I’m just in time to watch the ground disappear. The woods’ edge slowly reverts to winter calligraphy: broad brushstrokes of white ink.
Back to more typical March weather, gloomy and cold. The stream gurgles low, the wren gurgles high, and two crows wing their way in silence to a breakfast of bones.
Cloudy and warm. A Coopers’s hawk darts through the treetops. From the barnyard, a phoebe’s enthusiastic chant. Raindrops.
Robin singing in the rain. It could be April but for the lingering patches of snow and the lack of a blush on the red maples.
A leaden sky at sunrise, but an hour later, the sun glimmers through thinning clouds. Cardinal and titmouse song. The smell of bare dirt.