A nuthatch calling just inside the woods. From the barnyard, a Carolina wren. Chickadee in the yard. Then the sun comes up and it’s a party.
Carolina wren
8/21/2023
Sun glimmering in a sky so light blue as to appear white. The Carolina wren’s motor sounds as if it’s running out of gas. Mosquitoes begin to circle.
8/17/2023
Sunrise filling every cloud’s belly with pink as the Carolina wren trills over and over—once for each cloud, it seems.
8/13/2023
Sun in the treetops. A Carolina wren keeps answering a flicker, as if trying to master its call. Tree crickets. A train horn.
8/6/2023
A mosquito sings her dark need into my ear. Day advances like a slow machine of squeaking towhees and whirring wrens.
8/5/2023
Cloudy, but the clouds are paper-thin, so the Carolina wren bobbing on a branch casts a thin shadow.
7/30/2023
Clear and cool. A migrant wood thrush calls softly at first light. It’s very still. Then the wrens wake up.
7/21/2023
Fog at first light. The random percussion of rain dripping off the trees slowly joined by bird calls: pewee, towhee, song sparrow, wren…
7/10/2023
Clearing after sunrise. A Carolina wren lands briefly on my open book, between two haiku.
6/26/2023
Thick fog. The wren sings from the other side of the house, seemingly unconcerned by losing two days’ labor when their unbalanced new nest fell out of the rafters.
6/25/2023
A pair of Carolina wrens have mostly completed a nest in the rafters that wasn’t there yesterday morning, seven feet away from my chair. I love the soft sounds they make to each other as they build.
6/12/2023
Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows.
5/21/2023
In the half-light of dawn, a Carolina wren burbles aggressively inches away from my ear. Three fledgling wrens blink awake in the porch rafters.
5/5/2023
The cold, wet weather has lifted at last! The sun is fulsome and the bird calls glossy, even lubricous. An ovenbird and a Carolina wren sing back and forth, forest to meadow.