Mist rises from yesterday’s half inch of icy snow. A robin briefly joins the dawn chorus. The front-garden chipmunk returns from the woods with bulging cheeks.
2/22/2023
Just enough thinning of clouds for a classic, red-in-the-morning wash of mauve in the east, where quarry trucks are loud with their first loads.
2/21/2023
Interval of sun on a rainy morning—the forest shines and steams. The distant yammering of a pileated. The interstate’s whine.
2/20/2023
Mid-morning, a lid of clouds slowly closes over the east. Caroling juncos fall silent. The wind picks up.
2/19/2023
It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest.
2/18/2023
Sun blazing through the trees illuminates lost snowflakes, miles from the nearest cloud. A chipmunk with hibernation insomnia races up the driveway.
2/17/2023
Wind and rain. In the gray-brown woods, two silent pileated woodpeckers flap from tree to tree, wings like a revelation in black and white.
2/16/2023
No sign of the sun after a lurid dawn—the forecasted rain has its P.R. down. I can smell it. I listen for the first drops through a torrent of birdsong.
2/15/2023
High clouds yellow with sunrise appear to have some business off to the east. A downy woodpecker on a dead locust limb fires off a blast beat.
2/14/2023
An hour past sunrise, it’s mostly clear and quiet except for two red-bellied woodpeckers, their whinnying starting to sound almost like purrs.
2/13/2023
The western ridge turns barn-red with sunrise. As it fades to gold, down in the hollow a mob of crows starts up, jeering, denouncing.
2/12/2023
Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes.
2/11/2023
Bright and cold. I pull down my hat brim to see the shadows of the trees striping my yard. Valley noise is minimal but for one train horn, clear as a blast on an angel’s trumpet.
2/10/2023
Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind.