Overcast and cool. As the wood thrush fades in the distance, the brown thrasher parodies his song. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. The sun almost comes out.
brown thrasher
June 2, 2024
Heavily overcast and cool. Several deer are running back and forth in the woods, giving me glimpses of their red summer pelts. A thrasher sings a few bars and falls silent.
March 27, 2024
The briefest opening in the clouds for sunrise. The first brown thrasher drops by to sing a few bars. Then the squeaky wheels of goldfinches, converging on my mother’s feeders.
June 28, 2023
Overcast and breezy, with a strong smell of burning chemicals. Off in the distance, a brown thrasher is singing whatever pops into his head.
May 14, 2022
The rain stops and the thrush singing at the woods’ edge is joined by warblers, flycatchers, pewee, thrasher, a hummingbird’s mad courtship flight…
April 14, 2022
Thrasher thrasher says the thrasher. Rising sun a bright smear in the clouds. A winter wren’s boneless ode to joy.
June 4, 2021
Rain just past, tree leaves glisten in the sun. A brown thrasher holds forth like a street-corner prophet, hallelujah, hallelujah.
April 29, 2021
Two male towhees displaying at each other with what looks almost like affection. A brown thrasher’s one-bird echo chamber. The smell of rain.
May 16, 2020
A brown thrasher’s jazz echoes off the barn. In the clear plastic hummingbird feeder, a lampyrid beetle takes a very long time to drown.
April 25, 2018
The birds seem unusually active; there must be a fresh bloom of aerial plankton. Even the brown thrasher brings his jazz to the yard.
April 12, 2018
A brown creeper scuttles up an oak. A raven flies low over the house—its heavy wingbeats. The first brown thrasher appears in the lilac.
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.
July 1, 2016
A brown thrasher sings behind the house, repeating each line as usual like a didactic jazz soloist. The sun struggles blearily to come out.
April 28, 2016
Cold drizzle. A brown thrasher improvises at the woods’ edge, and I spot the first tent caterpillar web—a tiny white flag in a wild cherry.