Cold wind seasoned with rain—almost maritime weather. I sit in my old barn coat like a barnacle, listening for the approach of dawn.
Hard rain easing off by mid-morning. The sky brightens. A junco by the springhouse warbles its most complex song.
Clouds gather in the east, glowing brightly as they smother the sun. A west-bound freight rumbles through the gap. Bits of walnut shell rain down from a squirrel’s breakfast.
Heavy frost in the yard. A few, faint clouds disappear after sunrise, as squirrels climb high into the wine-red crowns of oaks.
A degree above freezing, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the quarry: shrill beeps and muffled thunders of stone. In the time it takes my cereal to cook, dawn pockets all the stars and planets, one by one.
Clear and still, with patches of light frost. The sky has made considerable inroads into the forest just since yesterday. A jay’s waking call elicits a reply from the far ridge: softer notes at first, then the familiar jeer.
Clear and still at dawn. As the last stars fade, the first sparrows begin to chirp. A crow alights on the tallest locust and begins to yell.
Heavily overcast at sunrise, signaled only by an upsurge in birdsong from dozens of white-throated sparrows, the Carolina wren, and a screech owl quavering in the pines.
Gray skies with a bitter wind. Colored leaves fly past. A pair of gray squirrels meet on the trunk of a black locust and touch snouts.
Wind breaking up the yellow-bellied clouds. Tulip tree samaras spin like the blades of invisible helicopters—a whole squadron headed out into the meadow.
Dawn turns the western ridge orange, as the roar of traffic from an inversion layer nearly drowns out the waking songbirds—all but the Carolina wren, whose teakettle teakettle teakettle is never quiet.
Wind and rain at dawn. Half an hour before sunrise, a great twittering erupts from the meadow as hundreds of white-throated sparrows, sheltering deep in the goldenrod, begin to awaken.
Thin clouds at sunrise. I squint at a piece of cattail down floating below the balustrade and it turns into the skinniest white spider I’ve seen, ascending an invisible thread.
An hour before sunrise, the crescent moon makes a brief appearance through the clouds. A barred owl calls. Two hunters follow their flashlight beams into the woods.