Cold but not freezing mizzle. Two pileated woodpeckers work the woods’ edge, tilting their heads to the side between taps. A flock of juncos.
Plummer’s Hollow
8:13. All sensible groundhogs are asleep. A sliver of sun through ridgetop trees. I look behind me at the side of the house: a faint shadow.
With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats.
Bitter cold. A garlic mustard skeleton hanging over the small hole in the yard that goes down to an underground stream is shaggy with frost.
Very cold and still. Just when I think the birds will never wake, the clouds redden a little and a nuthatch fires up its querulous engine.
Cold and quiet. A junco foraging in the stiltgrass chirps after every beakful. A five-squirrel parade snakes past the yard: mating season.
The first flakes, fine as flour, from a dull gray sky: far edge of the predicted blizzard. A silent crow flies over. A woodpecker knocks.
Zero degrees. Sun through bare branches—a shining fur of hoarfrost. Two ravens fly in low and circle my mother’s house.
Half a moon slowly floating to the top of the tall tulip poplar. The lights of a jet with its roar a quarter of the sky behind.
From the snowy woods, a call I don’t recognize—Avian? A predator?—with a note of complaint: I’m hungry. It’s cold.
Clear and still, with yesterday’s snow still clinging to the trees. Bergamot seedheads sport wizards’ caps. Crows yell about the sunrise.
A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
The coldest morning of the year so far. Every few minutes, a tree with ice in its heartwood cracks like a gunshot. The ridge turns pink.
Clear and cold: -16C/3F. Two white-breasted nuthatches exchange notes. The smoke from my chimney slinks along the ground toward the south.