Something in the lilac attracts half-hearted alarms from a chickadee, two titmice and a wren. The lilac leaves hang limp in the humid air.
Carolina wren
The sun climbs through the big red maple. A young Carolina wren sits on the springhouse gable, still and quiet, just swiveling its head.
In the morning coolness, I glimpse a pair of Carolina wrens perched on a lilac branch, touching bills to pass some winged morsel.
An hour past sunrise. The downpour past, a Carolina wren and a common yellowthroat both sing in fast waltz time.
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.