Overcast with a soundscape ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous: hermit thrush, tom turkey, a gnat mistaking my ear for a flower.
Plummer’s Hollow
Monday May 02, 2022
Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes to my book.
Sunday May 01, 2022
After insomnia, watching the rain come in and whatever brightness the morning might’ve had dwindling to just rose-breasted grosbeak song.
Saturday April 30, 2022
Another cold, clear morning. As the sun moves off the lilac it illuminates a small witch hazel up in the woods—that pale green fire of new life.
Friday April 29, 2022
Sun through a thin milk of clouds. A lull in birdsong, punctuated by a didactic ovenbird and the rose-breasted grosbeak’s brilliant warble.
Thursday April 28, 2022
Five degrees below freezing. The lilac leaves are already big enough to show their backs to the wind. Four white narcissuses bob and sway.
Wednesday April 27, 2022
Cloudy and cold. One of the local redtails is hunting along the woods’ edge, flying from branch to branch, head swiveling all about.
Tuesday April 26, 2022
The tulip trees have burst their buds—a gray-green haze. Hermit thrush in my left ear, thunder in my right.
Monday April 25, 2022
Sunlight softened by high-altitude haze. The hermit thrush is still around, dreamily singing up on the ridge, ignoring the boorish wren.
Sunday April 24, 2022
Cool beginning of a day forecast to be hot. The high, thin whistles of waxwings. A fantastically dissonant freight train horn.
Saturday April 23, 2022
A 30-second rain. I count nine shades of green, all circled by a cardinal in his flame-colored cap. The daffodils once again stand erect.
Friday April 22, 2022
Clear at dawn. A pale slice of moon in the treetops, and below, the ethereal song of a hermit thrush.
Thursday April 21, 2022
Heavily overcast. The patchy yellow of a goldfinch and the spicebush he sits in, grooming his breast feathers.
Wednesday April 20, 2022
Birdcalls echo off an icy snowpack for maybe the last time this spring. Backlit by the sun, the lilac glows intensely green against the snow.