A flat-gray sky. Train whistles and quarry noise travel up the hollow, accompanying two overlapped umbrellas, one black, one white.
Sunny and warm with an inversion layer: the clamor of traffic from I-99 and a mist-filled forest. Filmy-winged insects begin to appear.
By 11:00, the freezing rain has stopped and the rain of melting ice is underway—the woods are a-rattle with it. A crow won’t stop yelling.
Parallel bands—old contrails—score the northeast sky. In the front garden, I spot a mantis egg case sparkling high in the witch hazel.
The lilac is alive with chickadees, sparrows, and a Carolina wren stropping his bill on a twig. He flits to a high perch and begins to sing.
Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.
Overcast and unseasonably warm. The scent of corn wafts up from the valley. A distant throbbing that could be a grouse or a diesel engine.
The blear isn’t just in my eyes; the distance dissolves into a thin mist which the weak sun can’t burn off. A train’s dispassionate wail.
A black walnut crosses the yard, powered by the usual gray squirrel propulsion and planting system. A close rifle shot echoes off the ridge.
After weeks of near-absence, crows call and quarrel in all directions. It must be the gut piles, venison viscera festering among the leaves.
The sun rising through the trees off to the southeast seems so much less ambitious than last night’s moon. Goldfinches’ desultory chirps.
Cold and windy, but the scattered cumulous clouds barely move. Up on the ridge, the plaintive call of a turkey separated from her flock.
A voice woke me from a dream this morning, telling me there was snow on the ground—and there is! A Carolina wren trills from a snowy branch.
A nuthatch scolds something at the woods’ edge. A few distant gunshots. You’d never know the hollow is full of hunters sitting in trees.