A catbird looks for worms in the herb garden. The first bindweed trumpets blare their silent music into a cloudless sky.
catbird
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.
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.
Stifling humidity. With so many birds done nesting now, the catbird is the lone singer, echoing like a musician in an empty club.
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
Catbird and tanager trading licks. For half a minute, a vagrant sunbeam sets one of the two mullein stalks aglow.
Mist in the meadow and among the trees where the first sunbeams look almost solid. Crows, wren, catbird, common yellowthroat.
Sunny and hot. A catbird skulks in lilac shade. The unfurling beaks of wild garlic point in all directions, like a nervous flock of cranes.
Wet, but at least it’s not raining. Wood thrush, vireo and tanager songs mingle at the woods’ edge. The wingbeats of a catbird.
Dawn stealing influence from the just-past-full moon. The whip-poor-will awakening the catbird.
Waiting for rain, everything sounds like an augury—catbird, chipmunk, great-crested flycatcher—and just before the first drops, that hush.
The dame’s-rocket is at its height; my overgrown front yard is the equal of any garden. The catbird seems to concur.
The catbirds are much more furtive now going into the barberry that hides their nest. Two cuckoos call up a bit of rain.
A mid-morning pause in the rain. The towhee attacks a catbird gathering dead grass under the lilac, driving it off, then sings in triumph.