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.
Carolina wren
Clear and cool. Two Carolina wrens are burbling at the woods’ edge, while a cardinal is assaulting all the windows.
Rain. Every ditch runs with whitewater. Behind the bright forsythia, a gray wall of fog swallows the trees. Nevertheless, a wren.
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.
Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands.
Cold and clearing off for sunrise. From some sheltered spot, a Carolina wren is duetting with the wind.
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap.
Day slips in among torrents of rain. The woods are mangy with scattered patches of old snow. The gurgle of a wren.
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.
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.
Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.
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.
Sunrise glowing orange between the half-naked ridgetop oaks. The yard fills with small birds: sparrows, kinglets, the inevitable wren.