Clear and cold at the crack of dawn. A propeller plane comes blinking out of the east, banks and follows the mountain south, engine fading into a quiet trickle from the spring.
Plummer’s Hollow
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this: bitter cold with the ground mostly bare. Chickadees are having a fracas. Snow drifts down from a clearing sky.
A skim of snow overnight; a front has blown in and the birds are so much quieter. But a cold, gray morning is fine for gray squirrel romance: a pair ascend a young tulip tree together, touching often, and descend the adjacent walnut tree, nose to tail.
The snowpack is holey again. A sunrise sky is visible through the trees on the ridgetop for just a few minutes until the fog descends.
Dull mid-morning light—the threadbare snowpack is brighter than the clouds. A titmouse sounds the predator alarm and a squirrel cleaning off a walnut climbs a few feet higher into the lilac.
Mid morning, and the strong sunlight reveals in every shadow-casting hummock how snugly the ground’s coat of snow has come to fit.
Snow squall. A squirrel with two pursuers ascends a birch and turns on them, chasing again and again as the snow stops and clouds turn yellow.
Gray sky raked by swaying treetops, the wind made visible by squadrons of snowflakes flying this way and that. The sound of rodent teeth.
My phone insists it’s snowing, but the clouds hold their fire. The ground is nearly bare again; it could use a fresh coat. The creek has subsided to a quiet soliloquy.
Sunrise layers of yellow and blue, cloud and clear. High in a black birch, two chickadees feed and squabble.
An inch of wet snow clinging to everything. The juncos and chickadees sound the most excited I’ve heard them in a month—which might also be due to the sun’s cameo appearance.
Sky the color of faded jeans. It’s cold. The crash of a dead limb falling from the treetops where two female squirrels are eluding suitors.
Gray sky, and the ground scrofulous with snow—an eighth of an inch. A sudden cacophony of mourning dove wings.
Overcast with short-lived bright patches in the clouds. A cardinal sings a few notes at the time indicated for sunrise. Then it’s back to the sound of the wind.