Clear and cold, with sound out of the east: the rumble and squeal of a slow freight train. Jays jeer. A wren puts the kettle on.
Carolina wren
A nuthatch calling just inside the woods. From the barnyard, a Carolina wren. Chickadee in the yard. Then the sun comes up and it’s a party.
Sun glimmering in a sky so light blue as to appear white. The Carolina wren’s motor sounds as if it’s running out of gas. Mosquitoes begin to circle.
Sunrise filling every cloud’s belly with pink as the Carolina wren trills over and over—once for each cloud, it seems.
Sun in the treetops. A Carolina wren keeps answering a flicker, as if trying to master its call. Tree crickets. A train horn.
A mosquito sings her dark need into my ear. Day advances like a slow machine of squeaking towhees and whirring wrens.
Cloudy, but the clouds are paper-thin, so the Carolina wren bobbing on a branch casts a thin shadow.
Clear and cool. A migrant wood thrush calls softly at first light. It’s very still. Then the wrens wake up.
Fog at first light. The random percussion of rain dripping off the trees slowly joined by bird calls: pewee, towhee, song sparrow, wren…
Clearing after sunrise. A Carolina wren lands briefly on my open book, between two haiku.
Thick fog. The wren sings from the other side of the house, seemingly unconcerned by losing two days’ labor when their unbalanced new nest fell out of the rafters.
A pair of Carolina wrens have mostly completed a nest in the rafters that wasn’t there yesterday morning, seven feet away from my chair. I love the soft sounds they make to each other as they build.
Rain! That unfamiliar whisper rising to the level of a murmur. And a Carolina wren rushing about, making sure the world knows.
In the half-light of dawn, a Carolina wren burbles aggressively inches away from my ear. Three fledgling wrens blink awake in the porch rafters.