Steady rain from heavy clouds, with the seeming glow of orange and yellow leaves in lieu of a sunrise. A drenched gray squirrel beside the porch peers up at the sky.
From hard rain to a shimmer of drizzle to almost-sun by late morning, I have sat with a wounded foot propped up on the porch railing like an unlucky rabbit, taking whatever comes.
The gibbous moon high overhead gives a ghostly second life to the white snakeroot in the yard, its seedy inflorescences seeming to bloom again. Then an air-braking 18-wheeler bellows for the dawn, and they begin to fade.
Cloudy and cold at mid-morning. The high lisp of a brown creeper at the woods’ edge. In the distance, a gray squirrel is airing a complaint about a hawk.
Cold, clear, and quiet except for the crow in the road when I came out, who took several, labored wingbeats to reach his high-pitched cry.
Early-morning rain past, a chill breeze stirs in the tulip poplar beside the springhouse, four-lobed leaves waving like jazz hands on a thousand-armed bodhisattva, some green, some yellow.
Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
Crystal-clear. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the top of the tallest tree in the yard as sunrise reddens the western ridge.
Clear and very quiet at dawn. Some scattered towhee tweets. The thump of a walnut dropped by a half-awake squirrel.
Another classic October morning, crisp and clear. From the sun-struck treetops, a brown-headed cowbird’s liquid note. In the still air, a falling leaf spirals and somersaults, taking its time.
Cold and still at dawn, with pink clouds emerging from the engines of a jet. A white-throated sparrow pipes up. Something on four feet runs off through the deepening leaf duff.
Cold and still, with a wash of cirrus clearing off after sunrise. Sound is out of the east, so instead of the usual roar of interstate traffic, I hear the shrill beeping of quarry trucks reversing to be filled and the grumbling of stones.
A cold front has delivered October’s bright blue weather right on schedule. Yellow leaves flutter down in the breeze. A Carolina wren draws again and again from a seemingly inexhaustible well of song.
Sunrise brings birdsong: a Tennesee warbler’s blur of high notes answered by a towhee’s interrogatory tweet, and a white-throated sparrow’s “Oh, sweet Canada” giving way to the reedy whistles of cedar waxwings, tut-tutting robins, and a winter wren’s liquid braid.