Clear and cool. A gnatcatcher scoops a caterpillar off a walnut leaf and swipes it against a branch three times before swallowing.
black walnut
Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
Finches cluster high in a black birch, gorging in silence. A squirrel digs up a walnut and re-buries it on the other side of the road.
Cold, overcast, and nearly still: my clouds of breath drift sideways, leading my eye to a half-shell of black walnut, its empty brain case.
The first day of meteorological winter. It’s warm. I-99 is barely audible. The sound of teeth on walnut shell alternates with scold-calls.
Rain and fog. With the goldenrod going gray, the yellow has moved from the meadow to the woods’ edge: spicebush, walnut, birch, elm, tulip tree.
Overcast at dawn. The silence is broken by the periodic splats of black walnuts. A barred owl’s single, round note.
Clear and still. A double splat of black walnuts onto the driveway. At the top of an oak, a crow grooms itself with a soft clicking sound.
The unfamiliar clouds of my breath. A phoebe calling in the sun-drenched crown of a walnut tree, beneath that old slice of apple, the moon.
Walnut leaves have begun to yellow, as leaf miners turn the locust trees brown. A red-eyed vireo warbles on and on.
Cool and humid. An Acadian flycatcher gathers breakfast from the leaves of a walnut sapling. Sleep still tugs at my eyelids.
Mid-morning, and a wood thrush lands in the walnut tree next to the driveway to sing a few bars. A net-winged beetle flies past.
A few drops of rain. A gnatcatcher fluttering up from the weeds to a walnut tree swerves to—I assume—catch a gnat.
The first bergamots are in bloom, next to the first soapwort. In walnut-tree shade, the permanent shadow of a common yellowthroat’s mask.