Is it clear or clouded over? A gibbous moon turning pink above the ridge provides the answer. The great-crested flycatcher wakes up.
“Light rain” turns out to mean a shimmer of mizzle. The forest belongs once again to the preacher bird—red-eyed vireo—and the ovenbird chanting teacher teacher teacher.
If ever there were a morning to freeze in time forever, this would be it: this quality of light. The converse of wind with new leaves and birds of passage.
Dawn. Strips of cloud redden like a ladder of blood. But for sheer augury, nothing can top a blossoming hawthorn at the forest edge issuing a torrent of wood thrush song.
Ground fog turns the field white at sunrise. A rabbit feeding at the edge of the driveway feels me watching and looks up, eyes unreadable as quicksand.
The cold, wet weather has lifted at last! The sun is fulsome and the bird calls glossy, even lubricous. An ovenbird and a Carolina wren sing back and forth, forest to meadow.
A squirrel going back and forth over a small patch of yard sees me watching and pretends to dig elsewhere. An outraged robin drives a rival from the cedar tree.
For the third morning in a row, the thermometer hovers just above freezing as drizzle falls. Woodpeckers are already at work, beating their heads against trees.
A hair above freezing with rain tapering off. Two skinny deer, still in their gray-brown winter pelts, pick their way through the sodden vegetation.
Cold and half-clear for a red sunrise. The stream is still quiet—more raininess than actual rain. From off in the distance, a wood thrush’s ethereal trill.
Steady rain through the intense green of new leaves, softened by fog. A gray squirrel sits hunched over an acorn under the awning of its tail.
Thin fog full of goldfinch chatter and turkey gobbling. A rare red squirrel emerges from the woods and zips all around the springhouse.
Gray skies at sunrise beginning to tap with fingers of rain on this leaf and that—their first real shower. The avian chorus gains a soft percussion.
Cold and clear aside from some high-atmosphere haze, which gives the light a timeless feel as the sun climbs through a hillside of flowering oaks.