Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
Humid and cool, with last night’s rain still dripping from the trees. A lilac limb dead since last summer is greening up with bindweed. The new Carolina wren tries a dozen different variations on his teakettle theme, but so far no female has materialized.
Rain starts at first light. A soggy dawn chorus soon subsides, leaving only the new Carolina wren with his exotic accent and enthusiasm. As the rain thickens, he too falls silent.
Bright and cool for the solstice. A Carolina wren calls from the vicinity of the springhouse. In my front garden, yellow rays of Rudbeckia continue to unfurl.
Cool and still damp from yesterday afternoon’s downpour. Goldfinches go chittering through the treetops. Drinking the last of my tea in silence, I feel the absense of a resident Carolina wren pair—those endlessly enthusiastic assertions, and the female’s succinct replies.
Leaves droop on the elderberry and currant bushes beside the creek—another light frost. April was the cruelest month for trees and shrubs, but May so far hasn’t been much better. On the other hand, a Carolina wren is calling in the yard for the first time in ages.
Deep cold. Somewhere up on the ridge, an oak’s icy heartwood goes off like a gun. Ten minutes before sunrise, the eastern sky turns blood-red. A Carolina wren offers the briefest of commentaries.
I have to sweep three inches of snow off the porch before I can sit down, and when I do, flakes of great size land on my lap—little throwing stars a quarter-inch across. When the wind drops, I can hear the Carolina wren.
The sun clears the ridgetop and a bank of clouds by 8:30. The female Carolina wren trills, but there’s no sign of the male, who was missing last night from his usual roost above the laundry-room door. A half moon hangs overhead, pale as a slice of apple.
Light rain as the sky grows light. Two screech owls call back and forth, trill answering quaver, just as the Carolina wrens do a few minutes later.
Thick fog. A screech owl trills, seemingly in answer to the wren. Then crows join the chat. The owl’s trilling pauses, then resumes a quarter mile away.
Cold and gray, with the wind hissing through the last few oak leaves still on the trees. The male Carolina wren sleeps in past his mate, her ‘response’ preceding his call by nearly five minutes.
Thick fog. When the wren stops singing, there’s dead silence for several minutes until a nuthatch calls. From father away, the death-cry of a rabbit.
A mackerel sky slowly clearing off by mid-morning. A Carolina wren trills in the distance. The slightest of breezes makes the tulip tree’s remaining leaves tremble.
Heavily overcast at sunrise, signaled only by an upsurge in birdsong from dozens of white-throated sparrows, the Carolina wren, and a screech owl quavering in the pines.