First morning back after vacation, the setting moon is somehow already full. A fox sparrow sings beside the old springhouse. Up in the woods, the first blue-headed vireo tunes up.
blue-headed vireo
5/1/2021
Crystal clear. A blue-headed vireo ventures into the yard and the catbird immediately interrupts, taking his song and turning it inside-out.
4/8/2021
Behind the lilac with its new-green nubbins all aglow, a blue-headed vireo’s slow querying, separate from the turkey’s strident demands.
5/6/2020
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.
4/14/2020
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.
4/13/2019
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.
10/9/2018
A black-billed cuckoo skulks through the lilac, elegant despite its hunched posture, its pointy-winged flight. A blue-headed vireo calls.
4/14/2018
The first daffodils point their ear-trumpets toward the forest: a tom turkey’s florid declarations, a blue-headed vireo’s quiet song.
5/5/2017
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.
4/20/2017
The rhyming couplets of a brown thrasher. A blue-headed vireo’s dreamy soliloquy. When the sun comes out, raindrops glisten on every twig.
4/14/2016
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.
10/11/2015
Bright morning after a cold night. One katydid still stridulates, seemingly in dialogue with a blue-headed vireo—two slow, three-beat calls.
10/5/2015
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.
8/13/2015
Clear and cold. A blue-headed vireo calls from a sun-drenched treetop in the yard, answered only by the resident wood pewee.