A black-billed cuckoo skulks through the lilac, elegant despite its hunched posture, its pointy-winged flight. A blue-headed vireo calls.
blue-headed vireo
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.
Monday October 05, 2015
Sunshine for the first time in days. Filmy-winged insects drift in and out of the shadows where a blue-headed vireo sings its dreamy song.
Thursday August 13, 2015
Clear and cold. A blue-headed vireo calls from a sun-drenched treetop in the yard, answered only by the resident wood pewee.
Saturday April 18, 2015
Flies and butterflies, gnats and gnatcatchers, blue-headed vireo, paper wasp. The towhee in the lilac bush starts his song with a stutter.
Tuesday September 30, 2014
A blue-headed vireo on migration sings out of habit, perched near the top of the lilac. The free jazz of non-migrating geese—their ragged V.