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.
Carolina wren
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.
March 4, 2024
Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands.
February 14, 2024
Cold and clearing off for sunrise. From some sheltered spot, a Carolina wren is duetting with the wind.
February 11, 2024
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap.
January 28, 2024
Day slips in among torrents of rain. The woods are mangy with scattered patches of old snow. The gurgle of a wren.
January 25, 2024
Fog blurs the difference between the white below and above, the trees reduced to gray wraiths as a Carolina wren sings for the break of day.
January 12, 2024
The Carolina wren who sleeps above my laundry-room door forms a one-bird cheering section for the sunrise. Then the cloud-lid closes, and only the creek still sings.
December 22, 2023
Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
December 5, 2023
A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.
November 21, 2023
Dawn. A rustle in the leaves as bits of ice and half-frozen raindrops begin falling from the sky. From the lilac, the ticking of a wren.