The rambling old lilac is twice as green as it was yesterday, beginning to glow as the sun climbs out of some early-morning murk.
Clear and cold, with the third-quarter moon just cresting the trees. The dawn chorus begins with a gobbling turkey. A minute later the robin joins in.
Clear and cold with the deep quiet that only a major holiday can bring. A distant train. A Carolina wren’s sleepy start to the dawn chorus.
Still and cold at dawn. A cardinal sings once in the moonlight and goes back to sleep for ten minutes. A small cloud turns to rust.
A small flock of white-breasted nuthatches appears at the woods’ edge, singing and zipping around, just as the sun is fading into gray clouds.
First morning back after vacation, the setting moon is somehow already full. A fox sparrow sings beside the old springhouse. Up in the woods, the first blue-headed vireo tunes up.
Rain and fog linger from a pre-dawn thunderstorm as the sky brightens. The nasal calls of woodcocks mingle with a torrent of robin song.
Gray and still. A robin sings softly for a change. Two whitetails below my mother’s back porch bound up the hillside and out of sight.
Clear and cold. Frost glitters in the low-angled sun. The miniature daffodils are frozen in positions of prayer.
Crystal-clear and still. Two pileated woodpeckers a quarter mile apart are having a drum-off. The rising sun sneaks up behind a tree.
Rain easing off by mid-morning. The sun comes half-way out in the mirrors of raindrops dangling from branches, the forest like a pop-up gallery of miniature suns.
Sunrise into thin cirrus. A few seconds of liquid joy: the song of winter wrens, two of them, darting low over the creek.
Robins have joined the dawn chorus to dramatic effect; the hollow’s echo chamber throbs with birdsong. The first vulture of the day soars past a pink-bellied cloud.
A brief lull in the rain at dawn, darkness full of the sound of rushing water and the dim shapes of the first daffodils, face-down in the dead grass.