Five doves sit motionless in the crabapple. The drumming of a pileated woodpecker seemingly in response to metallic banging from the quarry.
Tentative footsteps at the edge of the porch, first from a gray squirrel, then a Carolina wren, each obviously annoyed by my presence.
Half an hour after sunrise, birds crowd into the crabapple beside the spring, flitting quick as thought through the network of branches.
Overcast and cold. Juncos fight over patches of dirt scraped bare by the snow plow. A chickadee investigates the undersides of branches.
Another four inches of light powder. We are rich in snow now. The soundtrack is mostly woodpeckers: downy, pileated, red-bellied.
Overcast. I contemplate the artificial mountain of snow in my yard, its boneless white. Imagine if it were blubber—how the birds would feast.
Fine snow. Cleaning the dust off my glasses, everything blurs together: white sky, white ground, the noise of trains and sparrows.
Bitter cold (-16°C) and still. The rising sun appears in a tiny gap between the trees as if this is all we’re allotted, this bristly thing.
Fine snow begins to fall. A squirrel is leaping through the treetops as if on some other white powder. Wakening nuthatches compare notes.
Sunrise and the clouds turn pink as the waning crescent moon turns pale. A squirrel way up in the woods begins its trek to the bird feeder.
One degree above freezing, and the last icicle has turned dull as the eye of a dead fish. As I watch, it trembles in the breeze and lets go.
A crow mob on the move—their angry cries. Sun stripes the snow. I hold my head still to watch the slowly shifting points of glitter.
This is winter as I remember it from my childhood: more than a foot of drifting snow at 20°F. The Carolina wren is singing under the house.
The snowstorm over, it’s quiet, except for the wind. A cardinal shelters in a barberry bush, as red as the berries had been.