Cold and crystal-clear, before the high-altitude smog from the burning forests of Canada shows up. On the end of a walnut limb, chipping sparrows are mating and foraging with their usual enthusiasm.
Clear, still, and unseasonably cold. A yellow-billed cuckoo calls, though not especially loudly, so perhaps the jury is still out on whether ‘sumer is icumen in’ or not.
Sun through thin clouds and a cold breeze. A hummingbird buzzes in and circles the spot where a hummingbird feeder last hung four years ago.
A few clouds disappearing into deep blue on a morning so clear, I feel even I could do the gnatcatcher’s job and find each drifting speck of nutriment.
The rain has stopped, but everything drips. In the splay of dying daffodil leaves below the porch, glowing white dewberry blossoms.
Cold rain. The wind from a distant storm stirs the bright green, half-grown walnut leaves, moving on into the darker greens of the forest.
Overcast and cool. As the wood thrush fades in the distance, the brown thrasher parodies his song. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. The sun almost comes out.
Georgeous and cool. I stay out until the sun clears the trees, letting the birdsong and the poems I’m reading intermingle in my ear: stanza after stanza of red-eyed vireo, tanager enjambment, the redstart’s end-stopped line.
A cold wind with thin clouds admitting a semblance of sunlight. The red-eyed vireo recites his refrain as doggedly as ever, not to be outdone by a downy woodpecker’s fast fills.
Overcast and cold. A phoebe hawking insects from the lilac does far less flying than sitting, tail bobbing with what probably only looks like impatience.
Mostly cloudy with a cold wind. Several ravens are having a noisy conclave in the treetops, their high, harsh vocals bringing in a pair of crows, who offer commentary from a safe distance.
Birds still singing in a downpour: scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, Acadian flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher… Fronds of bracken tremble as if readying for flight.
It’s been raining for hours, drumming on the leaves and dripping from the furred tongues of irises, which sway ever so slightly on their tall stalks.
Cold and mostly clear. Barely audible above the red-eyed vireos and scarlet tanager, the minor-key call of a titmouse—that wintry sound.