Another gorgeous, cool morning. Two ravens fly over at sunrise, croaking. A phoebe in the distance is just audible under the usual cascade of wren song.
Carolina wren
September 3, 2024
The coldest morning since May, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the east—the slightly quieter direction. The Carolina wren duets with beeping quarry trucks.
August 30, 2024
Heavily overcast and still. Two whippoorwills call off to the east. Sunrise is imperceptible aside from a short blast of Carolina wren song.
August 25, 2024
A desultory dawn chorus of one Carolina wren and a towhee. I consider baring an arm to stop the mosquitoes from whining in my ear.
August 20, 2024
Windy and cold, with the sun in and out of clouds. The Carolina wren’s usual enthusiasm sparks a red-eyed vireo to call exactly once.
August 9, 2024
Steady rain with a bit of a breeze—the remains of a hurricane that got the wind knocked out of her and lost her eye. At 7:39 the Carolina wren finally pipes up.
August 8, 2024
Drizzle. A family of wrens make the sprawling old lilac sing and shimmy.
July 30, 2024
A white sky with a bright gash of sun. The red-eyed vireo falls silent, leaving only two crickets, one who chirps and one who trills. Then, inevitably, the wren.
July 28, 2024
Another cool morning for a day forecast to be hot. A Carolina wren lands on the railing and cocks his head at me. A screech owl calls in the distance.
July 25, 2024
Cloudy and damp, with long intervals between bird calls. A small woodpecker’s improbably loud rattle from the black locusts sets off a pair of Carolina wrens.
July 21, 2024
Cool and partly cloudy. A fledgling wren at the woods’ edge begs to be fed—an interrogatory whine. The mob of feral garlic heads are splitting their hoods.
June 27, 2024
Clear and cool. Two Carolina wrens are burbling at the woods’ edge, while a cardinal is assaulting all the windows.
April 2, 2024
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
March 5, 2024
Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely to have noticed. It’s spring.