Rising late to a sky as gray as my head. Quarry trucks are beeping. The Carolina wren has switched to a minor key.
Carolina wren
Tuesday November 16, 2021
A wren calls under the porch. It’s five degrees below freezing. An inversion layer brings the whine of tires over the ridge, red with sunrise.
Tuesday November 09, 2021
Dawn silence. A distant Carolina wren. I’m standing outside in my PJs enjoying the relative warmth (38F) when I spot the first cloud in days.
Saturday October 23, 2021
A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
Monday September 20, 2021
Spring peeper just after moonset. Then whippoorwill. Wood thrush. Carolina wren. Phoebe. A pileated woodpecker cackles and it’s day.
Saturday September 18, 2021
Standing out front talking with my mom, I watch the fog behind her turn from pink to orange to gold. A Carolina wren adds color commentary.
Saturday September 11, 2021
Dawn. A coyote yipping and howling in the distance. The old hornets’ nest under the eaves gives birth to a Carolina wren.
Tuesday August 10, 2021
Tulip poplar leaves waving like four-fingered, cartoon hands. A shimmer of mizzle thickens into rain. The Carolina wrens go on dueting.
Monday July 12, 2021
Dawn mediated by fog is slower, but it gets to the same, obvious spectacle in the end. And the usual wren has something to say about it.
Wednesday June 30, 2021
Mist in the meadow and among the trees where the first sunbeams look almost solid. Crows, wren, catbird, common yellowthroat.
Thursday March 18, 2021
A dark morning; the ridges disappear into fog. A Carolina wren’s call is barely audible over the rain’s deafening hush.
Saturday March 06, 2021
Fourth-quarter moon just above the trees. The dawn chorus begins with a mourning dove. Then Carolina wren, crows, a red-winged blackbird.
Sunday February 14, 2021
Tentative footsteps at the edge of the porch, first from a gray squirrel, then a Carolina wren, each obviously annoyed by my presence.
Wednesday February 03, 2021
This is winter as I remember it from my childhood: more than a foot of drifting snow at 20°F. The Carolina wren is singing under the house.