Day three of the heat wave. The cicadas have been calling since before dawn. Two goldfinches yellower than the sun come chittering out of the treetops and swoop past the porch.
Plummer’s Hollow
Clear at sunrise with an eyelash moon and a deer grazing just inside the woods’ edge. A Cooper’s hawk calls from atop the tallest black locust and flies off to the east.
Breezy and clear. A cicada lands on the chair beside me and emits a brief, mechanical purr, red eyes glowing like the lights on an ambulance, before flying directly into a railing, dropping to the floor and relaunching into the yard.
Overcast and cool. Buzzing and squeaking, a ruby-throated hummingbird circles a red bandanna hung out to dry.
Breezy and cool—a front at last. A train keens in the distance. The whispery discourse of trees in which cicadas have lapsed for a few long moments into silence.
Sun and a breeze have come to dry us out; everything shines and drips. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow sing back and forth across the woods’ edge.
Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
The white noise of cicadas gives voice to the fog. I spot a second-year common mullein just beginning to raise her flagpole, velvety leaves wearing coats of cloud.
An intensely green lushness makes an orphan out of the brown pile of juniper cuttings at the woods’ edge—last winter’s one spot of green. At 7:10, in the pouring rain, the first cicada starts up.
Rain at dawn tapering off into another patter alongside the red-eyed vireo’s. Wood thrushes sing back and forth. From deep in the lilac, a house finch lets loose.
Breezy and cool, with the sun guttering in cirrus. Over the course of an hour, I swat an astonishing diversity of small flies and gnats. It’s good to feel wanted, I suppose.
Breezy and cool. A brown moth flutters into the last of the dame’s-rocket. Sunlight glints on the isinglass wings of a cicada heading for the treetops.
Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
Everything wet and shining as the clouds move out. A towhee flies up to a low limb and rubs the caterpillar in his bill against the bark to remove its bristles.