Cool beginning to a hot day. I can’t stop watching the hummingbird sphinx moths, their retractable drinking straws as quick as thought.
Plummer’s Hollow
5:15. The moon through thin clouds. A whip-poor-will’s distant chant. 9:15. The sun through thin clouds. A hummingbird’s mid-air defecation.
The sun feels as if it has no business being out on such a quiet morning. A towhee sings a truncated version of his song: just “Your tea!”
Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.
A large native bee lands on a porch column to groom her antennae. A black ant races back and forth brandishing a dead ant like a flag.
Goldfinches go on chittering the entire time I sit outside, poring over a trail map. One hummingbird sphinx moth works the bergamot.
A few drops of rain. A gnatcatcher fluttering up from the weeds to a walnut tree swerves to—I assume—catch a gnat.
5:02. Wood pewee. The first bird call of dawn, or insomnia’s last hurrah? Two minutes later, the chorus starts up.
Cool morning. A red-spotted purple butterfly drops by the bergamot patch just to sunbathe, sitting motionless like a black flower.
The sun comes out and with it a hummingbird, unfazed by the presence of visitors, including a three-year-old boy gleefully destroying an old log.
The sun catches a tiny, white spider ballooning past the porch on a long strand of silk. It touches down in the bergamot, among bumblebees.
Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.
Stifling humidity. With so many birds done nesting now, the catbird is the lone singer, echoing like a musician in an empty club.