Cloudy and damp, with long intervals between bird calls. A small woodpecker’s improbably loud rattle from the black locusts sets off a pair of Carolina wrens.
Carolina wren
7/21/2024
Cool and partly cloudy. A fledgling wren at the woods’ edge begs to be fed—an interrogatory whine. The mob of feral garlic heads are splitting their hoods.
6/27/2024
Clear and cool. Two Carolina wrens are burbling at the woods’ edge, while a cardinal is assaulting all the windows.
4/2/2024
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
3/5/2024
Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely to have noticed. It’s spring.
3/4/2024
Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands.
2/14/2024
Cold and clearing off for sunrise. From some sheltered spot, a Carolina wren is duetting with the wind.
2/11/2024
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap.
1/28/2024
Day slips in among torrents of rain. The woods are mangy with scattered patches of old snow. The gurgle of a wren.
1/25/2024
Fog blurs the difference between the white below and above, the trees reduced to gray wraiths as a Carolina wren sings for the break of day.
1/12/2024
The Carolina wren who sleeps above my laundry-room door forms a one-bird cheering section for the sunrise. Then the cloud-lid closes, and only the creek still sings.
12/22/2023
Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
12/5/2023
A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.
11/21/2023
Dawn. A rustle in the leaves as bits of ice and half-frozen raindrops begin falling from the sky. From the lilac, the ticking of a wren.