Two chickadees take turns excavating a hole in the last remaining limb of the dead cherry, their small bills tearing at the rotten wood.
Plummer’s Hollow
The leaf-footed bug walks slowly and jerkily as a Mars rover on my shoe, antennae shining, then flies straight as a comet across the yard.
Small flies cavort on the porch floor despite the morning chill, sure of the heat to come. The red-eyed vireo is beginning to sound weary.
Just like yesterday the clear light, the mid-morning doe with her fawn. But today there’s a second fawn, prancing, kicking up its heels.
A black snake leaves the flicker nest-hole and begins a perilous descent of the smooth trunk, a bulge in its midsection from all the eggs.
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See my blog post on the whole flicker-black snake saga at Via Negativa.
Cool, bright and clear—the kind of morning that used to nearly break my heart with longing, I never knew for what. I go clean the kitchen.
An indigo bunting lands on a grass stalk and sinks from view. A white moth on a white column trembles for an instant when the rain returns.
First light. The half-moon has just cleared the trees. Behind the other bird calls, an almost continuous rattle from the chipping sparrows.
A warm morning at last. Waxwings whistle at the tops of the tall locusts, but from the phoebe nest, only silence: the young have fledged.
Bright blue sky. A cabbage white butterfly pauses in its zig-zag journey to circle a patch of dogbane leaves illuminated by the sun.
The flickers trade places, and the male, fresh from sitting in the darkness, perches for a few seconds on a dead branch bent like a hook.
Bracken ferns in the yard crowd together as if trying to hide from the sun. A cerulean warbler like a small power saw stuttering to life.
Wind from a distant storm blows the leaves backwards. In lieu of thunder, a downy woodpecker’s fast rattle on a hollow limb.
An intruder—another flicker—quietly descends the elm, pokes its head in the nest hole and is promptly chased off by the current occupant.