Perhaps just a bit fewer mosquitoes this morning. The double knock of a stone shifting under a squirrel’s weight.
Plummer’s Hollow
Feet propped up, my trouser legs become new territory for flies. A vulture glides over the forest, its shadow racing up and down the trees.
Shadows lose their sharp edges as thin, high clouds move in. Where the coyote chorus sang last night, now only the distant howls of children.
Gnats backlit by the sun fly back and forth, reversing direction without slowing down even the slightest. The kak-kak-kak of a Cooper’s hawk.
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
Hot and humid. A silver-spotted skipper draws my eye to a bindweed trumpet, its silent hosannas seemingly aimed at the ancient rose bush.
Humidity so thick that breathing feels like vaping. Cabbage whites puddle in the road—the hallucinatory, slow fanning of 21 pairs of wings.
Sunrise pink fading to orange. The woods’-edge green grows more intense, and the birdsong more diverse.
High, hazy clouds dilute the sunlight. A chipping sparrow lands sideways on a tall dame’s-rocket stalk, singing as it bows under his weight.
The third gorgeous morning in a row. I could sit here forever, gaping at the light through the trees, if only it would last.
Clear and cold (46F/8C). A few, blue chinks in the green wall of leaves where the ridgetop oaks have been decimated by gypsy moth caterpillars.
Cool and breezy, with the clearest air in weeks. A redstart slowly circles the house, singing his sneeze-like song.
Sunrise past, the last of the night-time moths are fluttering up under the leaves. A sound like the forest drawing a breath.
Wet, but at least it’s not raining. Wood thrush, vireo and tanager songs mingle at the woods’ edge. The wingbeats of a catbird.