A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
American robin
Dawn comes with a light breeze rummaging through the oaks, a freight train laboring up the valley, the tutting of robins.
The brassy singers of open spaces take it in turns: robin, cardinal, towhee. But I am ready for shade and the whispery songs of warblers.
Bright sun. High in the tulip tree, among the shining leaf nubbins, two robins meet for combat and tumble to the ground.
Rain and the first daffodils: April has come early. Fog appears and disappears among the trees. The robin unspools a silver thread of song.
Overcast and damp, with woodpecker rattle and squirrel-claw clatter and an exuberant robin duetting with his echo.
On the northwest-facing hillside, the snow has shrunk to patches overnight. A robin sings here and there as if testing the acoustics.
After yesterday’s melting, the snowpack is a maze of wrinkles. The ridge turns orange. A hundred robins appear in the yard.
So much song from a single robin perched 80 feet up in a black locust! Down below, juncos comb through the prone stiltgrass for seeds.
Robin song echoes through the fog. My neighbor drives past on the tractor. In the wake of its rumble, a towhee’s eponymous call.
Under the sort of sky poets call sullen, a robin’s relentless bowl of cheer. Leave it to the white-throated sparrow to add a wistful note.
Cold as a well under a deep blue sky torn by the distant roar of military jets. The morning singers carry on: cardinal, song sparrow, robin.
Blue sky with quarry noise and a singing robin. The sun stretches one finger of light down through all the trees on the hillside.
A patch of dirt laid bare by the snow plow is aswirl with birds of all kinds. Even a robin appears, as if to assess the likelihood of worms.