An hour past sunrise. The downpour past, a Carolina wren and a common yellowthroat both sing in fast waltz time.
Carolina wren
The Carolina wren goes from querulous chirps to full-throated denunciations from the top of the dead cherry tree. But the snow continues.
Snow blows sideways and rises from the ground in snaky spirals. A Carolina wren dances on top of the stone wall like a wind-up toy.
Rain has erased the last patches of snow. The lilac bush gives birth to a cardinal, a wren, four white-crowned sparrows and a chipmunk.
A wren sits grooming itself in the sun on the peak of the springhouse roof, fluffing out its breast feathers, probing under its wings.
The Carolina wrens are all worked up about something. One of them lands on the porch railing and harrangues me, bobbing like an angry toy.
A pair of Carolina wrens—one in the lilac, the other in the dead cherry—flit from branch to branch, tasting the new-fallen snow.
Another warm morning. A Carolina wren pops out of the bridal wreath bush like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and ascends the lilac, singing.
A Carolina wren breaks the silence, bobbing up and down on the peak of the springhouse roof: one side frosty, the other steaming in the sun.
A pair of Carolina wrens call back and forth across the yard, the female responding to each exuberant outpouring with the same terse note.
A Carolina wren rattles in the rain gutter, perching on the rim — its own feeding trough — and bobs up and down on its backward knees.
A honeybee conducts a slow inspection of the porch railing, including my boots. I’m pondering the secret cousinship of wrens and crickets.
A Carolina wren swipes its bill back and forth on the end of a dead limb, as if sharpening a knife. A groundhog sneezes in the strong sun.
I stare bleary-eyed at a chickadee darting through the lilac, listen to dueting wrens. The sun, too, is blurred by a kind of mucous.