Behind the lilac with its new-green nubbins all aglow, a blue-headed vireo’s slow querying, separate from the turkey’s strident demands.
blue-headed vireo
Wednesday May 06, 2020
Rain. A gray catbird on the gray road pecking at things that are not gray. In the trees above, a blue-headed vireo sings possession.
Tuesday April 14, 2020
Sunny and cold. The intense green of the lilac’s new leaves against the brown woods moves me almost to tears. A blue-headed vireo sings.
Saturday April 13, 2019
Two spicebushes side by side, one still bare, the other in full yellow fuzz. Up in the woods, the soft song of the first blue-headed vireo.
Tuesday October 09, 2018
A black-billed cuckoo skulks through the lilac, elegant despite its hunched posture, its pointy-winged flight. A blue-headed vireo calls.
Saturday April 14, 2018
The first daffodils point their ear-trumpets toward the forest: a tom turkey’s florid declarations, a blue-headed vireo’s quiet song.
Friday May 05, 2017
When the rain finally slackens off, I can hear a vireo, goldfinches, the catbird, a train horn, and the throaty roar of a well-fed creek.
Thursday April 20, 2017
The rhyming couplets of a brown thrasher. A blue-headed vireo’s dreamy soliloquy. When the sun comes out, raindrops glisten on every twig.
Thursday April 14, 2016
Another cloudless day. The first blue-headed vireo sings softly in the woods. Overhead, angry croaks of a raven being dive-bombed by a crow.
Sunday October 11, 2015
Bright morning after a cold night. One katydid still stridulates, seemingly in dialogue with a blue-headed vireo—two slow, three-beat calls.