cerulean warbler – The Morning Porch/Patio

Sunday May 12, 2019

Dave Bonta May 12, 2019

A flock of warblers at the woods’ edge in the pouring rain: flashes of redstart, cerulean, black-and-white. A singing black-throated green.

Dave Bonta May 9, 2019

Singers change with the weather: in the mist, wood thrush and cerulean warbler. Scarlet tanager in the drizzle. Indigo bunting in the rain.

Dave Bonta May 1, 2019

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.

Dave Bonta June 19, 2016 1

Another bright sunny morning—meaning the shadows are deep and full of unseen singers: scarlet tanager, cerulean warbler, even a wood thrush.

Dave Bonta May 31, 2016 1

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.

Dave Bonta May 22, 2016

Two great-crested flycatchers foraging in the rain target insects sheltering under leaves. The only dry thing is a cerulean warbler’s song.

Dave Bonta May 4, 2016

Two crows fly past, staying just inside the woods’ edge. Over the several voices of the creek, a cerulean warbler’s ascending, buzzy trill.

Dave Bonta May 25, 2013 1

Two Carolina wren fledglings in the cedar—small balls of fluff. A cerulean warbler flies in to peer at me, the cause of so much scolding.

Dave Bonta May 7, 2013 1

A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, the same urgent, rising notes that woke me an hour earlier. But still no wood thrush.

Dave Bonta July 14, 2012 3

We’ll remember this as the summer a cerulean warbler sang incessantly in the yard, which every day—presto!—produced more rabbits.