Overcast with 100% chance of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush. A yellow-bellied sapsucker looking all tapped out.
Friday April 09, 2021
Late morning; a pause in the rain. Arboreal lichens glow blue-green under a low cloud ceiling.
Thursday April 08, 2021
Behind the lilac with its new-green nubbins all aglow, a blue-headed vireo’s slow querying, separate from the turkey’s strident demands.
Wednesday April 07, 2021
After yesterday’s warmth, the daffodils are out by the hundreds, along with the less-celebrated bittercress, that lacy and delicate invader.
Tuesday April 06, 2021
Overcast and still. A field sparrow’s accelerating note. A turkey hunter and his wife, led by their dog, carry a tree stand into the woods.
Monday April 05, 2021
Lust is in the air: a turkey gobbling in the field, a Cooper’s hawk calling in the woods, and right in front of me, a sunlit cloud of lekking gnats.
Sunday April 04, 2021
Just enough upper-atmosphere haze to soften the sun from glare to glow. Today the hepaticas will open—I’m sure of it.
Saturday April 03, 2021
Cooper’s hawks calling up on the ridge. One of them takes flight: such a small bird to be so strident! And the sky begins to turn white.
Friday April 02, 2021
Bitter wind. Up in the woods, sun glints off an old jar the frost heaved up. When I go to fetch it, ice colonnades crumble under my boots.
Thursday April 01, 2021
Fat snowflakes fall on the daffodils’ down-turned cups, while a towhee chants—according to the time-worn birders’ mnemonic—Drink! Drink!