Another warm morning. I realize I like the dead cherry because it reminds me of winter. A young robin lands on a branch with its beak open.
American robin
A squirrel descends an oak at high speed while rolicking robin music plays in the background. Closeup on the maple buds round as stoplights.
Three inches of sticky snow have turned the trees white and intricate, with many moving parts: sparrows, robins, a blackbird’s creak.
Heavy frost, and the bare dirt in the garden has crystallized into icy turrets. Motes of snow float past, backlit by the sun. Robin song.
Colder this morning, and no sign of the phoebes that came back yesterday. A robin sings and falls silent. The sun comes out, goes in.
Cloudy and warm. A robin sings in the yard, garrulous as an unmarried uncle. Red-bellied woodpeckers leapfrog each other on a tree trunk.
The yard is alive with robins foraging, chasing, tut-tutting, rust-orange breasts the color of the oaks, all aglow in the mid-morning sun.
Drum of rain on the roof and the birds sound distant—robin, field sparrow, cowbird—the world greener than it’s been in seven months.
Cardinal, song sparrow, phoebe, robin… the spring chorus is already taking shape. Overhead, the calls of crows, their labored wingbeats.