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.
catbird
June 26, 2025
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.
May 15, 2025
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.
June 22, 2024
Ten minutes past sunrise, the catbird begins to improvise. The first mosquito welt of the day rises on the back of my hand.
June 11, 2024
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.
June 5, 2024
Heavily overcast and humid. A hen turkey’s anxious call. The springhouse catbird slipping out of her stream of consciousness to mew.
May 15, 2024
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.
September 3, 2023
Clear and not as cool. A catbird mews from the lilac. Rays of sun in the canopy are astir with gossamer wings.
July 14, 2023
The catbird mews and warbles, a hummingbird rockets back and forth, but it’s the mosquito’s still, small voice that gets my attention.
July 7, 2023
A foggy sunrise. The catbird circles the house, mimicking the Carolina wren on double speed.
May 14, 2023
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.
June 19, 2022
A catbird looks for worms in the herb garden. The first bindweed trumpets blare their silent music into a cloudless sky.
May 17, 2022
Cool and clear as a morning in October. A catbird fresh from his bath picks insects off dogwood leaves with a fussy chirp between each morsel.
July 14, 2021
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.