Cloudy and damp, with long intervals between bird calls. A small woodpecker’s improbably loud rattle from the black locusts sets off a pair of Carolina wrens.
black locust
6/17/2024
Clear and still. A flicker’s eponymous chant from the sunlit crown of a black locust. The black raspberries in my yard are already blood-red.
5/2/2024
A warm breeze at sunrise. My reading is interrupted by an unfamiliar trill: a redheaded woodpecker in the dead crown of the tallest black locust. I watch through binoculars as he works over the tree and himself, probing under bark one moment and under his wing the next.
5/27/2023
Another clear, cold morning with little dew. Goldfinches gad about in the tops of the locusts, seemingly oblivious to other birds’ territorial obsessions.
4/20/2023
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.
2/15/2023
High clouds yellow with sunrise appear to have some business off to the east. A downy woodpecker on a dead locust limb fires off a blast beat.
12/8/2022
A late-morning brightness in the clouds. A white-breasted nuthatch descending a tall black locust turns right-side-up.
9/17/2022
Thin fog at sunrise. A pileated woodpecker lands on the side of a tall locust tree and gets bum-rushed by a squirrel.
8/10/2022
Milk-white sky and the white noise of tree crickets. A pileated woodpecker cackles to herself at the top of a tall locust.
7/26/2022
It’s actually cold—54F/12C! A crow at the top of the tallest locust where the sun strikes has one thing to say and she is saying it.
6/29/2022
Cold and clear. Three waxwings join the sun high in the dead crown of a black locust, yellow bellies aglow.
3/11/2022
Clear everywhere except where the sun rises pink, orange and yellow, heralded by small woodpeckers with loud, locust-wood drums.
12/23/2021
Overcast and cold. A chickadee foraging at the woods’ edge sings his fee-bee song. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark.
8/8/2021
Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.