Chipmunks cluck—a hillside of leaky faucets. Over by the powerline, a crow is venting what sounds like frustration: a hollow ach ach ach.
Cold as it is, the birds seem to avoid the sun. In one shadow, a wren putt-putts. In another, a song sparrow shakes water from his wings.
A black-throated blue warbler alights in the dead cherry. I follow it to the spicebush, where yellow-throated vireos sing bright red notes.
Sparrows and finches chitter in the half-light. A song sparrow sings beside the springhouse, a sound I haven’t heard here in over a year.
A crow mob: enmity in unison sounding so different from a flock of grackles, where each bird is simply saying “here.” It begins to rain.
Steady rain drumming, dripping, stripping leaves from the understory gums, orange and red careening down in the otherwise still-green woods.
At 42 degrees Fahrenheit, only one cricket calls from the vicinity of the springhouse, a low, hollow creaking like a prolonged death rattle.
The witch hazel in my garden is just coming into bloom, yellow tentacles uncurling, the bunched nuts like maledictions waiting to burst.
Clear and windy. Twelve crows fly sideways in tight formation over the treetops, the still-green oak leaves gilded by the sun.
Steady rain; the early-morning light lasts for hours. A large, grayish blob halfway up a tree turns out to be only a caterpillar tent.
The first holes have appeared in the forest wall, blue sky above the ridgeline leaking through. A dozen silent jays skim the treetops.
How does the poison ivy know to turn the same salmon as the red maple it has infiltrated? A phoebe chases a kinglet from the roadside weeds.
The downpour eases, and the cattail leaves stop dancing. A burst of bird calls from within the dogwood thicket: waxwings, towhees.
Three migrant catbirds land in the spicebush beside my front door, drawn by the berries’ stop-sign red. Between each berry, a scolding mew.