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.
cerulean warbler
May 8, 2022
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.
June 22, 2021
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
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.
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.
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.
June 19, 2016
Another bright sunny morning—meaning the shadows are deep and full of unseen singers: scarlet tanager, cerulean warbler, even a wood thrush.
May 31, 2016
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.
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.
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.
May 25, 2013
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.
May 7, 2013
A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, the same urgent, rising notes that woke me an hour earlier. But still no wood thrush.
July 14, 2012
We’ll remember this as the summer a cerulean warbler sang incessantly in the yard, which every day—presto!—produced more rabbits.
June 6, 2012
Bracken ferns in the yard crowd together as if trying to hide from the sun. A cerulean warbler like a small power saw stuttering to life.