Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
Plummer’s Hollow
Gray sky with a smudge of sun, as bright as the half-out forsythia against the woods. A woodpecker and his echo. The rumble of freight.
Cold, windy, and overcast. The ring of daffodils in my yard offers a bright yellow rebuke to the grayness. Drink your tea! says the towhee. I’m trying.
Rain easing off along with the dawn chorus. The sky brightens, and a brown creeper on the walnut tree beside the road bursts into song.
Daffodils are open under a gray-wool sky. A cowbird’s liquid note. Up by the garage, a towhee is calling.
A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles.
Sunrise from under a lid of cloud turning the ridge orange. The robin sings a few bars. A propellor plane fades into the distance.
Five degrees below freezing and half-cloudy at dawn, clearing off by sunrise. The robin is missing in action, offering no competition for the caroling of a Carolina wren.
A few degrees above freezing at sunrise. A titmouse’s monotonous song. The clouds turn orange and drift off like boats into the blue.
Dawn. A last glimpse of the moon through the clouds as the torrent of robin song is joined by a cardinal, a phoebe, the wren.
A damp, gray dawn sweetened by the calls of field sparrows and a bluebird up by the barn. A small shower passes through the woods, rustling like a millipede in the dead leaves.
Clear, cold, and quiet. The rising moon gleams like a scimitar as it passes behind the big tulip tree, and emerges five minutes later as pale as a grub.
Patches of blue, and a pair of hawks arrowing north silhouetted against the clouds. An inversion layer brings traffic noise from over the ridge, but a robin’s soliloquy is the loudest thing.
Windy and cold. I sit in the sun all bundled up, listening to birdsong through two hats and a hood. My mother calls to tell me about a flock of turkeys.