The first full day of astronomical autumn dawns to downpour. A cricket in the garden scrapes out a last few, scattered notes.
Plummer’s Hollow
Sunrise somewhere over the rain. In the dripping forest canopy, a dark card-shuffle of wings.
Under a thinning white sky, the thinning crown of a black cherry tree already less green than salmon. The sunflowers face every direction.
Spring peeper just after moonset. Then whippoorwill. Wood thrush. Carolina wren. Phoebe. A pileated woodpecker cackles and it’s day.
5:30. A pair of barred owls exchange queries as the sky begins to brighten. A screech owl’s quaver. Sudden loud wingbeats in the meadow.
Standing out front talking with my mom, I watch the fog behind her turn from pink to orange to gold. A Carolina wren adds color commentary.
Overcast and cool. A few bars from a mystery vireo. A mosquito’s whine becomes a smear with a clap of the hands.
Overcast and rainy. in the dim light, sunrise is evidenced only by the appearance of mosquitoes. One after another they land on my knuckles.
Dawn is its own thing—not just a transition, I think, as fog forms and grows. When it lifts, the no-longer-dark meadow glows goldenrod-yellow.
Fifteen minutes before sunrise, thin fog appears and disappears. A few wood thrush notes. A chestnut-sided warbler’s “Pleased to meetcha!”
Breezy and overcast at dawn. From up in the woods, the declarative WHO! of a barred owl. The last katydid rattles to a stop.
Having finally learned the name of a plant in my yard that wasn’t in the field guide, I am seeing it anew, the tall, the flamboyantly branching white vervain!
Dawn. A coyote yipping and howling in the distance. The old hornets’ nest under the eaves gives birth to a Carolina wren.
In one hole in the clouds a meteor; in another the dawn. The scattered notes of night-flying migrants coming down to roost. A quarry truck beeping.