A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
Gloomy and cold at dawn. From the depths of the seed-laden goldenrod, the first, bright chips and whistles as the sparrow horde wakes up.
Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
Overcast but brightening. Snow birds are moving through the half-bare lilac, exchanging notes. Titmice and chickadees forage in the thinning birches.
The pleasing monotony of a cold autumn rain, drowning out all other sound except for a low throbbing in the distance. Leaves fall drunkenly, careening this way and that.
Six degrees above freezing and clear at sunrise. The spicebushes next to the road are at their most luminous yellow. Chipmunks tick like asynchronous clocks.
Under a thin grin of moon, the maples reclaiming their red. Three crows wake up with awe in their throats.
Within the moon’s crescent, its dark bulk is aglow—a reminder that Earth is still, somehow, a source of light. A towhee calls twice and goes back to sleep.
An hour before dawn, the crescent moon hangs just above the ridge, with Venus blazing like a campfire through the trees. It’s cold. An inversion layer brings the sound of every engine waking in the valley.
Windy and cold. In the wall of leaves at the woods’ edge, the first few fragments of what will be my winter sky.
Rain clouds moving out by mid-morning, when blue sky appears, revealing a higher layer of cirrus moving west while shreds of cumulus keep flying east.
Heavily overcast—what the weather app calls “light rain”—with a crow yelling in the distance and a yellow-bellied sapsucker mewing like a kitten.
Half an hour past sunrise and the birds are quiet. All along the woods’ edge, yellow leaves are falling by ones and twos. The smell of burning plastic.
Half moon high overhead at 5:00, half-illuminating the ground fog and darkening the shadows into which walnuts thud down.