A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.
Carolina wren
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.
Between dawn and sunrise, a small rainstorm’s pleasant susurration drowns out everything else. As it eases, a Carolina wren takes over, caroling in a minor key.
Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
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.
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…