Warm sun and an inversion layer bringing traffic noise from over the ridge. Cardinals and titmice compete with the whine of truck tires.
Plummer’s Hollow
Cloudless and still. As the thermometer needle inches past freezing, the first bluebird of spring warbles once up by the barn.
Bright sun, bitter wind. With the snow almost gone, the neighbors’ chickens must be out of their coop: the rooster crows and crows.
Sunlight at half-strength on the half-gone snow. Behind the house, a squirrel twists and rubs itself ecstatically against a rotten stump.
Wet snow clings to every branch and twig, making the forest look almost as inviting as it does in early May when the leaves are half open.
Thick fog, and the road gray with sleet that fell in the night. Three red-bellied woodpeckers are whinnying back and forth in the treetops.
I take off my hat to sunbathe as icicles drop, turning the roof toothless. The brass section tunes up: jay, cardinal, song sparrow.
Weak sun threading through the trees. The glint of microscopic flakes makes the air seem metallic. A white-throated sparrow’s wavering song.
Bitter cold with a wind. I sit with feet propped up as usual while snowflakes needle my cheek and pile up behind the ridges in my jeans.
Silence has descended along with the snow—6 inches so far—save for the rumble of snowplows. A squirrel walks on the dry underside of a limb.
The drone of a single-prop plane, hidden like the horizon by trees. A mourning dove calls. The sun slowly submerges in a mud bath of clouds.
Bitter wind. A small privet bush bends under the weight of six juncos, then two titmice, then three waxwings, each feasting on its berries.
Four inches of wet snow clinging to every branch is almost all shaken down in one great blast of wind. The cardinal never stops singing.
Bright and windy. Leaves skitter like crabs across the forest floor. I track an unseen hawk’s passage by the squirrel alarms it sets off.