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.
cardinal
March 29, 2025
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.
March 25, 2025
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.
March 11, 2025
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.
March 10, 2025
In the half dark, the roar of Monday morning traffic from over the ridge. The last stars fade. A cardinal pipes up.
February 18, 2025
Deep cold at dawn. Icicles hanging from the eaves bend this way and that. The trees creak and groan. The chip, chip of a cardinal waking up.
January 25, 2025
Sunrise reddens a third of the sky. The male cardinal, clearly in his glory, holds forth.
September 25, 2024
Dark and rainy at sunrise, the cardinal like a pilot light in the recesses of the lilac chirping back and forth with his mate.
September 13, 2024
6:24. The cardinal sings a few times and falls silent. 6:26. The whippoorwill calls a few times and falls silent. 6:29. The Carolina wren starts up.
June 27, 2024
Clear and cool. Two Carolina wrens are burbling at the woods’ edge, while a cardinal is assaulting all the windows.
June 25, 2024
Clear and cool. A deer snorts alarm up in the woods. A female cardinal picks a black raspberry on her way through my yard.
June 4, 2024
Dawn passes too quickly; already the cardinal is attacking his image in the window. Three moth wings rest on the arm of my chair.
April 29, 2024
Night and day overlap as the moon rises through the trees, serenaded by a family of barred owls, while the first song sparrow and cardinal herald the dawn. Then the whip-poor-will begins to shriek.
April 11, 2024
Dawn comes during a break in the rain, building from one lone cardinal to a phoebe singing contest to a mob of crows. From the pipe under the road, a winter wren’s soft cascade.