A fresh dusting of snow. I close my eyes to listen the birds: song sparrow, bluebird, chickadee, a white-throated sparrow’s wavering song.
bluebird
An inversion layer at sunrise. Above the roar of traffic from over the ridge, a bluebird’s warble. The clouds flare pink and slowly fade.
It’s cold. I lie in bed listening to a bluebird. When I emerge onto the porch an hour later, the first blue holes are opening in the clouds.
Windy and cold, with a new skim of snow on the ground. Song sparrow and bluebird bubble over with what sounds today like forced cheer.
A smudge of a sun sits in the crown of the tall tulip poplar like a grotesque fruit. Bluebird and Carolina wren song: a joyous soundtrack.
Four bluebirds take turns checking out the empty flicker hole in the dead elm—a winter nest site, maybe? A raven flies past, croaking.
It’s not my imagination; the bluebird saves his best song for the bluest skies. But this morning, even a passing plane sounds inspired.
Sunrise. The bluebird warbles once, as if unsure whether it really will be that kind of day. The cardinal keeps singing his one good note.
A wool-gray sky. This is not the blue morning we were promised! But tell it to the bluebirds warbling above the garage.
Sunrise: a bluebird warbles. From a thousand feet up, the cry of a killdeer, that lost shorebird, circling the long brown waves of hills.
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from…
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from the electric line, and suddenly it feels 25 degrees warmer. A ragged V of geese, too low to be migrants.
Bluebird, white-throated sparrow, a starling’s liquid note, and high overhead, a killdeer: the sky must be blue above the fog.
I keep hearing fragments of song—winter wren, bluebird, song sparrow—and the usual tight flock of siskins in a walnut tree going zzzzzzip.