Cool and still damp from rain in the small hours. The sun goes back in after just fifteen minutes. The house finch stops caroling as the wind picks up.
The sun glimmers through thin clouds and a murk of pollen, gathering strength as it clears the trees. A gray squirrel foraging on the ground dashes for cover at another squirrel’s “bird of prey” alarm. The bird of prey fails to materialize.
A freakishly warm breeze lightly seasoned with rain. The sun appears and disappears at random. A Louisiana waterthrush calls from the first bend in the creek below the spring.
Sun through thin clouds on an unseasonably warm morning. A carpenter bee inspects my aging porch. Next to the old broken dog statue in my yard, the white narcissus is in bloom.
Under gray skies, the leaf buds of tulip trees are splitting open: green fuzz against the clouds. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Quiet and cool at mid-morning. A cloud appears in the east only to disintegrate. Towhees call from several directions as I finish my tea.
White-throated sparrows sing back at forth at sunrise—so much less intense than the song battle between phoebes at first light. A silent crow heads toward the compost pile.
A crescent moon at dawn through trees on the cusp of leaf-out—possibly my last such view until October. It remains the only scrap of white in the sky as the sun’s first gleam tops the ridge.
A fraction of a degree above freezing. The early daffodils are already drooping, and all the brightness has drained from the forsythia after yesterday’s killer frost. A field sparrow’s rising note.
Clear and still, with a heavy frost. Wild turkeys call and gobble up above the barn, where a blood-red sunrise seeps down into the meadow.
A cold wind and enough clouds to keep frost at bay, though I doubt the tender young leaves and blossoms will be so lucky tonight. A winter wren burbles by the springhouse. High on the trunk of the big tulip tree, the white breast of a brown creeper inches skyward.
Downy, hairy, red-bellied and pileated: all the woodpeckers for miles around are suddenly drumming, one after another, as the scattered clouds turn orange on a crisp, nearly frosty morning.
A rainy Easter morning. At 6:31 a.m., in the half-light of dawn, a brown thrasher announces his return from the tropics with a minute-long improvisation atop the springhouse roof.
An April shower turns into a downpour just as I come out onto the porch. I look up from my book sometime later and realize that it’s stopped. The sky brightens. A towhee and a song sparrow trade riffs.