The sun rises an hour earlier, heralded by the usual motley assortment of sparrows, wrens and corvids. The stratosphere breaks out into a rash of clouds.
blue jays
Partly cloudy and almost warm. The jays are having heated conferences overhead, with strangled cries and jeers. A few more leaves catch rides on a passing breeze.
Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds.
Breezy and cool at mid-morning. A blue jay’s rusty croon in the crown of an oak. The plop of dropped acorns.
Another cold, clear morning. Robins streaked by the molt contend with blue jays for the best perches in the tops of the tall locusts, answering jeers with tuts.
Clear and cold, with an inversion layer making the hollow noisy with traffic. When it wanes: church bells. A blue jay’s distress call.
Damp and cold. Snowmelt drips from the roof. A blue jay makes a half-hearted hawk-scream and fall silent.
Moon above, mist below, and the treetops shot with sun. Jays call back and forth, acorns filling the pouches in their throats.
Clear and cold, with sound out of the east: the rumble and squeal of a slow freight train. Jays jeer. A wren puts the kettle on.
Clearing enough by 8:00 for the sun to nest in the treetops. Highway noise subsides, giving way to the knocks and clatter of falling walnuts and acorns, the scold-calls of chipmunks, the jeers of jays.
Cold and clear at sunrise, with sound out of the east: the quarry’s daily grind instead of the interstate. A jay answers a reverse-beeping truck.
A hair above freezing. A pair of jays fresh from their ablutions ascend a flaming birch, gleaning insects on their way to the oaks.
Showers give way to tentative sunlight by late morning. It’s quiet. A lone blue jay calls.
Sunlight leaks down from the treetops. A blue jay’s brassy call. Then the silence resumes where it left off.