Cool and clear, with bluebird and cardinal song. The leaves of the tulip tree sapling in my yard are nearly white with dew. I grease my boots.
cardinal
Cool and humid at dawn. I open my laptop to draw the mosquitoes away from my head with a glowing screen. The cardinal begins to sing.
Sun through thin clouds. A female cardinal foraging under the lilac picks up a twig, examines it, and sets it down again. Through the lilac limbs I spot the long legs of a deer picking her way across the road bank.
A couple inches of snow plastered to the porch and the eastern sides of trees. I can just make out a cardinal’s cheer, cheer above the bitter wind.
Bright sun in a cloudless sky at one degree above freezing. The spring has subsided to a hearty gurgle—the loudest thing once the cardinal falls silent.
An hour past sunrise, the sun finally hits my porch. A gray squirrel is hectoring all and sundry about some long-gone hawk. The cardinal sings.
Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
Steady rain. An hour past daybreak, it begins to get dark again. The rain comes down harder. A cardinal chirps.
Dawn. I wake a wren roosting above the door. The cardinal is already singing—and off in the distance, another cardinal responds. They seem in general agreement.
Out at dawn for the cardinal’s opening salvo and a mosquito nuzzling my neck. The twittering of goldfinches. An east-bound freight blows its horn.
Cold rain with an occasional rattle of ice pellets. The creek has risen from a gurgle to a gush. The cardinal sings from deep within the juniper.
A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles.
Dawn. A last glimpse of the moon through the clouds as the torrent of robin song is joined by a cardinal, a phoebe, the wren.
Another crystal-clear dawn. A song sparrow and a Carolina wren are trading licks, following initial solos from a robin and a cardinal, all over the whine of traffic.