The cardinal attacks his reflection then sings in triumph. The Cooper’s hawk skulks out of the woods like a ninja. Today I’m the cardinal.
cardinal
The cardinal whose doppelganger lives in the upstairs window taps twice and flies off—just going through the motions. I sneeze at the sun.
The sun’s slow fadeout. Two male cardinals travel together to the stream and back again—flashes of color in an increasingly monochrome yard.
Snow fine as fingerprint powder; it’s almost zero. Two cardinals and a jay in the crabapple tree wait their turn to drink from the spring.
In the red center of a berry-laden barberry bush, a male cardinal turns all about, gorging. When he flies, so much of its red goes with him.
Cold as a well under a deep blue sky torn by the distant roar of military jets. The morning singers carry on: cardinal, song sparrow, robin.
Cold and gloomy, but the yard seethes with birds: juncos, cardinals, wren. A hundred yards away, a hawk sits on a limb, bedeviled by crows.
Another wintry morning, and I’m marveling at the sharpness of the air in my lungs, the sun in my face, the blue sky, the cardinal’s song.
As the sunlight advances, the frosted yard turns from glitter to glisten. The barn-red cardinal’s inexplicably cheerful two-note tune.
Snowstorm. A cardinal sits atop a small tree, his red plumage almost glowing among the white branches. Two woodpeckers tap in and of sync.
Warm sun and an inversion layer bringing traffic noise from over the ridge. Cardinals and titmice compete with the whine of truck tires.
I take off my hat to sunbathe as icicles drop, turning the roof toothless. The brass section tunes up: jay, cardinal, song sparrow.
Four inches of wet snow clinging to every branch is almost all shaken down in one great blast of wind. The cardinal never stops singing.
The usual bird calls—cardinal, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker—but something seems off. It’s the clouds, coming from the wrong direction.