It may be cold, damp, and cloudy, but budburst has come to the old lilac, once again stippled in bright green despite having to re-leaf after last summer’s drought.
Sunrise somewhere between showers, cold and sodden, the sky flat-white like the eye of a dead fish. No flies for the flycatchers, no sun for the wren.
Below freezing still, and the sky more clear than not. Up on the ridge, a hermit thrush is singing: faint chimes, as if some gate to paradise had a doorbell.
A patchwork sky at sunrise with a bitter wind. The daffodils’ cups are all overturned. A few lost snowflakes straggle past.
Cold rain with an occasional rattle of ice pellets. The creek has risen from a gurgle to a gush. The cardinal sings from deep within the juniper.
Damp gloom suffused with white-throated sparrow song, high and thin and tremulous, amid bright splashes of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush.
Overcast and quiet, after the drama of a thunderstorm at dawn. The creekside currant bushes have turned intensely green. A hen turkey’s peevish rasp.
A damp and gloomy sunrise. Juncos twitter in the tops of black birches. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
Gray sky with a smudge of sun, as bright as the half-out forsythia against the woods. A woodpecker and his echo. The rumble of freight.
Cold, windy, and overcast. The ring of daffodils in my yard offers a bright yellow rebuke to the grayness. Drink your tea! says the towhee. I’m trying.
Rain easing off along with the dawn chorus. The sky brightens, and a brown creeper on the walnut tree beside the road bursts into song.
Daffodils are open under a gray-wool sky. A cowbird’s liquid note. Up by the garage, a towhee is calling.
A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles.