A shimmer of rain, which the roof gathers into a smattering of drips. A pileated woodpecker flies over, yelling its head off. A pair of catbirds exchange notes.
catbird
Heavily overcast and quiet, except for the steady trill of tree crickets and a distant vireo. A catbird rustles in the silky dogwood, gorging on the deep-blue drupes.
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.
Clear and cool at sunrise. In the holiday-morning silence, a worm-eating warbler’s dry rattle in the woods accompanies the catbird singing in the yard and field sparrows in the meadow. A crow. The rumble of a jet.
Thin fog, or just very thick humidity? But it’s still cool enough to enjoy the slanting sunbeams, the tired-sounding cicadas, the catbird’s jazz.
A damp and foggy morning. From the woods’ edge, the high, whispery notes of a bay-breasted warbler, here merely to forage on his way to the far north. A catbird launches into a solo.
Ten minutes past sunrise, the catbird begins to improvise. The first mosquito welt of the day rises on the back of my hand.
Cold and gray. A catbird crosses the yard with a fecal sac from one of its nestlings in its beak. A male ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes the boot soles on my propped-up feet.
Heavily overcast and humid. A hen turkey’s anxious call. The springhouse catbird slipping out of her stream of consciousness to mew.
Gloomy and damp, with a shimmer of mizzle. The distant boom of dynamite at the quarry. A catbird improvises a few melodic lines. A breeze springs up.
Clear and not as cool. A catbird mews from the lilac. Rays of sun in the canopy are astir with gossamer wings.
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
A foggy sunrise. The catbird circles the house, mimicking the Carolina wren on double speed.
A catbird running through his dawn monologue is drowned out by a whippoorwill. Fog forms in the lower hollow, extending a ghostly finger into the marsh.