Sunrise has been delayed by clouds, but I hold out hope. A wren tuts impatiently. A train horn blows a flat minor chord.
Carolina wren
Dawn sky striped with red. A small cloud forms in the hollow. The sleepy croaks of a raven: urk, argh. Then the wren and it’s day.
Clear, cold, and quiet except for the wren. A breeze through the treetops: trembling leaves anointed by the sun.
Humid and cool. Gnatcatcher parents and fledglings exchange silvery calls as a disheveled fledgling wren watches me from the eaves.
Sunlight softened by high-altitude haze. The hermit thrush is still around, dreamily singing up on the ridge, ignoring the boorish wren.
Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
Clouds that looked dark before sunrise are mottled with blue-gray and yellow. Woodpecker blast beats. Wrenish riffs.
Deep blue sky; two degrees above freezing. As the sun climbs out of the trees, the morning chorus dies down until it’s only the Carolina wren.
Yesterday’s snow glitters between the shadows of trees. To the winter-long harangues of cardinal, titmouse and Carolina wren, add one phoebe.
Back to more typical March weather, gloomy and cold. The stream gurgles low, the wren gurgles high, and two crows wing their way in silence to a breakfast of bones.
A crow and a Carolina wren take turns issuing three-beat calls, as if debating: CawCawCaw. TeakettleTeakettleTeakettle. It starts to rain.
I love these frigid mornings with their gift of silence. The stream gurgling out from under my yard. Nuthatches. Wren. A distant screech owl.
A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
Little is audible over the drumming of the rain but a train horn—and of course the Carolina wren, sounding as insistently joyous as ever.