Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
Three degrees below freezing, but no frost. The dawn chorus seems reduced in volume, though the towhees and one tom turkey aren’t holding back.
Cool and damp at sunrise. A small cottontail grazes at the woods’ edge: a salad of tiny leaves. A gnatcatcher’s soft soliloquy.
In the half-light, the first white blossoms on the old French lilac look like snow. When the whippoorwill pauses for breath, I can hear the first wood thrush’s ethereal song.
Cool and clear at sunrise. A gobbler trailed by two hens parades up into the forest, making a half-turn each time he opens the dark fan of his tail.
Hen turkey calling at sunrise like a rusty machine pleading for oil, the tom interrupting with his usual non sequitur. A squirrel noses the stump of a freshly felled locust.
Below freezing at sunrise, but a breeze seems to have staved off frost. Will oak flowers survive? Will wildlife thrive or starve? So much depends on one or two degrees difference now.
A cold and rainy dawn. The thermometer’s red pointer crosses the Centigrade zero—a null set. I say an atheist’s prayer for all the new leaves.
Back to normal April at last: cool and damp and shining, the woods’ edge a haze of tiny leaves and catkins. The ancient bridal wreath bush is white again.
Sun glimmering through fog as wild turkeys whine and gobble, mourning doves moan, and a red-winged blackbird sings in the marsh.
A towhee sings from the woods’ edge as the eastern sky brightens: Drink your, drink your, drink your… I raise my tea in salute.
A lull in the morning chorus. Contrails of all ages litter the sky like a boneyard. A woodpecker’s fast rattle.
Unseasonably warm at dawn, trees swaying, and I have to shake my head hard to dispel a vision of charred trunks and smoking hillsides. A pale moth flutters past.
Two phoebes in a singing contest at dawn. A warm breeze. The half-moon settles in a tall pine.