Sweating in the 50-degree heat, my head swims with a literal spring fever. I envy the juncos hopping on a patch of snow, their quiet notes.
A wedge of geese, high against the clouds, headed due north: migrants. The first song sparrow of the year breaks into his trademark song.
Tundra swans at sunrise—their ethereal flutes, their shining white forms—are trailed by a local Canada goose and the crescent moon.
A chipmunk dashes over the snow from one tree melt-hole to another. A downy woodpecker finds a hollow limb that makes him sound enormous.
The white field is striped with tree shadows like a map of the Midwest, blue highways all running parallel. It’s impossible not to get lost.
Clear and cold. A silent pileated woodpecker propels itself through the sunlit upper air with great slow strokes of its shining oars.
Dawn. The Cooper’s hawk is back, his kak-kak-kak echoing off the icy snow. I scan the trees, a haystack of branches, for that fierce needle.
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from…
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from the electric line, and suddenly it feels 25 degrees warmer. A ragged V of geese, too low to be migrants.
A wet spring snow clings to everything and coats both ends of the porch, where something very tiny has left an arrow-straight trail of dots.
A squirrel bounds over the snow with a newly disinterred walnut in its teeth. Behind it in the yard, a neat hole ringed with pieces of husk.
The sound of Monday carries on the wind over the ridge. Here, patches of blue, none of them yet coinciding with the sun. A raven croaks.
A cacophony of crows, doves, cardinal, titmouse, nuthatch, woodpecker, squirrel, locomotive, all amid the silent carpet-bombing of the snow.
The high winds have stopped, but who knows how much snow has fallen? An apple core tossed into the yard for the deer disappears with a thud.
The snow-plastered chairs are huddled at the end of the porch like sheep, and the end-table has lost its top. I pull two hoods over my hat.