A downpour tapers into hard rain and I can hear the birds again. Whatever the cerulean warbler might be asking, he doesn’t seem satisfied with a redstart’s insistent response.
cerulean warbler
Sun and a breeze have come to dry us out; everything shines and drips. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow sing back and forth across the woods’ edge.
Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.
Cool and overcast, without a breath of wind. A branch breaks under the weight of a squirrel, who leaps to safety. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow trade licks.
A wet and shining woods stippled with burst buds. Over the rush of the creek, a cerulean warbler’s buzzy love song to the sky.
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
A flock of warblers at the woods’ edge in the pouring rain: flashes of redstart, cerulean, black-and-white. A singing black-throated green.
Singers change with the weather: in the mist, wood thrush and cerulean warbler. Scarlet tanager in the drizzle. Indigo bunting in the rain.
Mist. A fragment of blue in the top of an oak that could be a cerulean warbler. From the far ridge, the faint sound of a wood thrush.
Another bright sunny morning—meaning the shadows are deep and full of unseen singers: scarlet tanager, cerulean warbler, even a wood thrush.
I take my eye off the clear sky for a moment and suddenly there are clouds—four streaks beside the moon’s thin frown. Cerulean warbler song.
Two great-crested flycatchers foraging in the rain target insects sheltering under leaves. The only dry thing is a cerulean warbler’s song.
Two crows fly past, staying just inside the woods’ edge. Over the several voices of the creek, a cerulean warbler’s ascending, buzzy trill.