A green haze of invasives: daylily, barberry, garlic mustard. A gnatcatcher hovering and diving between raindrops—the tick tick of its bill.
The croak of a raven skimming the treetops. A white-throated sparrow fresh from bathing in the stream grooms itself in the weak sunshine.
A blush of blossoms on the ancient red maple, one of my most important teachers when I was young and learning to climb—on branches now gone.
A kestrel lands on a limb at the woods’ edge, looks around and flies off, skimming the ground. The field sparrow barely pauses his song.
Amid the heavy raindrops, the lighter ghosts of just-melted snowflakes. Treetops sway this way and that. The towhee goes on calling.
Overcast. Gun shots from over the ridge. A blue-gray gnatcatcher calls from the edge of the blue-gray woods.
Two spicebushes side by side, one still bare, the other in full yellow fuzz. Up in the woods, the soft song of the first blue-headed vireo.
Cold at mid-morning, warm by noon: every hour I take off another layer. The blurry spot on my glasses turns out to be two midges, mating.
The cardinal whose doppelganger lives in the upstairs window taps twice and flies off—just going through the motions. I sneeze at the sun.
Sunny but cooler. The liquid note of a cowbird in the yard. A question mark butterfly careens around the house and collides with my shoe.
Sunny and warm. A red-bellied woodpecker chases a flicker out of the woods. The first spring azure butterfly blows past like a leaf.
A winter wren warbles his spring song beside the springhouse, appropriately enough, where daffodils have just begun to open.
Mid-morning, and it’s already too warm for a sweater. I count six, seven, eight bird calls blending into one—except for the crow’s off note.
Robin song echoes through the fog. My neighbor drives past on the tractor. In the wake of its rumble, a towhee’s eponymous call.