Yes, I can watch tanagers in the treetops, a hooded warbler in the bush. But just over the ridge, the interstate howls. There’s no escape.
May 13, 2010
From the moment I come out, the world conspires to wake me up: yesterday, the tulip tree dropped a branch; today, a Cooper’s hawk swoops in.
May 12, 2010
Two grackles appear at the woods’ edge, iridescent black against the brightest green of the year. In the garden, the first yellow iris.
May 11, 2010
Gray squirrel in a walnut tree gnawing on a walnut, fox squirrel in a maple feasting on maple keys: one spits out shells, the other, wings.
May 10, 2010
A chipping sparrow foraging below the porch at sunrise flits up to a branch with a beakful of fine, gray, nest-lining material: my own hair.
May 9, 2010
Breezy and just 3 degrees above freezing. A warbler marbled like a sideways zebra wheezes from the lilac: black-and-white, easiest of i.d.s.
May 8, 2010
Hard rain at dawn on International Migratory Bird Day, and all the calls blend into one. Yellow Baltimore field thrush, where are you?
May 7, 2010
Blue overhead at sunrise; cloudy to the north. Bluejays jeer through the sunlit treetops, the margins of their tails white as semaphors.
May 6, 2010
I ponder the walking onion in my herb bed—how did it get here? A hummingbird lands on the tip of a branch and shakes water from its wings.
May 5, 2010
So clear, it almost hurts: so blue, so green. And the yellow warbler singing what birders always hear as “sweet-sweet-sweet-I’m-so-sweet.”
May 4, 2010
Great-crested flycatcher in the bare branches of a locust, silhouetted against the sky. A jet appears: no trail, just a gleaming splinter.
May 3, 2010
Mid-morning, through the screen door, faint bell-like notes. I put the phone down and rush out into the rain. The wood thrush is back.
May 2, 2010
Tiger and spicebush swallowtails circle the white lilac. Leaves blow backwards. A ruby-throated hummingbird hovers a foot from my nose.
May 1, 2010
The buzz of a black-throated green warbler, a catbird’s brassy solo, the noodling of a red-eyed vireo: May comes in with a new soundtrack.