Cold, clear, and still, with heavy frost silvering the yard. A red squirrel tries to get its nerve up to run past me, but fails and retreats to the garden, where it sits glaring at a gray squirrel under the lilac.
Three degrees above freezing at sunrise. Small snowflakes drift down from the mostly blue sky and vanish into the greening earth.
Breezy and cold. The tuilp poplars wear their new, pale green leaves like robes of feathers, all in motion under the gray sky. I catch a glimpse of accipiter wings, hear the kak-kak-kak call of a Cooper’s hawk.
Mid-morning and the sun-soaked woods erupt with overlapping wild turkey gobbles, one tom getting gobbled up—so to speak—by another. They sound close, but the tiny leaves are already enough cover to hide in.
Cool and still damp from rain in the small hours. The sun goes back in after just fifteen minutes. The house finch stops caroling as the wind picks up.
The sun glimmers through thin clouds and a murk of pollen, gathering strength as it clears the trees. A gray squirrel foraging on the ground dashes for cover at another squirrel’s “bird of prey” alarm. The bird of prey fails to materialize.
A freakishly warm breeze lightly seasoned with rain. The sun appears and disappears at random. A Louisiana waterthrush calls from the first bend in the creek below the spring.
Sun through thin clouds on an unseasonably warm morning. A carpenter bee inspects my aging porch. Next to the old broken dog statue in my yard, the white narcissus is in bloom.
Under gray skies, the leaf buds of tulip trees are splitting open: green fuzz against the clouds. A cowbird’s liquid note.
Quiet and cool at mid-morning. A cloud appears in the east only to disintegrate. Towhees call from several directions as I finish my tea.
White-throated sparrows sing back at forth at sunrise—so much less intense than the song battle between phoebes at first light. A silent crow heads toward the compost pile.
A crescent moon at dawn through trees on the cusp of leaf-out—possibly my last such view until October. It remains the only scrap of white in the sky as the sun’s first gleam tops the ridge.
A fraction of a degree above freezing. The early daffodils are already drooping, and all the brightness has drained from the forsythia after yesterday’s killer frost. A field sparrow’s rising note.
Clear and still, with a heavy frost. Wild turkeys call and gobble up above the barn, where a blood-red sunrise seeps down into the meadow.