Dawn mediated by fog is slower, but it gets to the same, obvious spectacle in the end. And the usual wren has something to say about it.
Plummer’s Hollow
Absorbed in a book of poetry from Uruguay, I forget to notice anything except for the high-pitched, nasal cries of a fledgling crow.
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
Overcast and cool. A Cooper’s hawk calls up in the woods, eliciting a response from what sounds like a juvenile—that nearly universal whine.
Brief rain showers, one after another. A goldfinch lands sideways on a blossoming mullein stalk as if to compare yellows.
The dawn chorus is full of silences now. My leg and I are playing another exciting game of Name that Rash: Chiggers? Poison ivy? No-see-ums?
In the growing heat, a wood pewee flies from perch to perch, singing, circling the house. I feel as if I’m being ensorcelled.
The first bergamots are in bloom, next to the first soapwort. In walnut-tree shade, the permanent shadow of a common yellowthroat’s mask.
Catbird and tanager trading licks. For half a minute, a vagrant sunbeam sets one of the two mullein stalks aglow.
On a dark and cloudy morning, the green of the woods’ edge seems even more intense. The scarlet tanager sounds hoarse with longing.
Overcast and cool. A clatter of hooves on moss as a half-grown fawn runs past, just inside the woods’ edge. The distant ringing of a phone.
Mist in the meadow and among the trees where the first sunbeams look almost solid. Crows, wren, catbird, common yellowthroat.
Sunny and hot. The meadows hum with insects. In the marsh, a male and female goldfinch are gathering cattail down for their nest.
Sunny and hot. A catbird skulks in lilac shade. The unfurling beaks of wild garlic point in all directions, like a nervous flock of cranes.