I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this: bitter cold with the ground mostly bare. Chickadees are having a fracas. Snow drifts down from a clearing sky.
chickadee
1/24/2023
Sunrise layers of yellow and blue, cloud and clear. High in a black birch, two chickadees feed and squabble.
1/23/2023
An inch of wet snow clinging to everything. The juncos and chickadees sound the most excited I’ve heard them in a month—which might also be due to the sun’s cameo appearance.
1/17/2023
Cold rain. The last scrap of December’s snow in the yard has shrunk to the size of a handkerchief. A back-and-forth between a titmouse and a chickadee.
12/30/2022
Under a gray lid of cloud, the sound of steady dripping as roofs shed their snow. A cat lying in ambush has its cover blown by chickadees.
12/3/2022
Cold rain. Four chickadees in a high-speed chase around the yard pause in the lilac for a vociferous exchange of views.
10/4/2022
How can it be so yellow out and yet so cold? But the winter birds sound happy: chickadees, nuthatches, a red-bellied woodpecker.
3/4/2022
Sunrise. Trees popping in the cold (11F/-11C). A chickadee adds a rare, third note to his spring song.
2/8/2022
Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
12/23/2021
Overcast and cold. A chickadee foraging at the woods’ edge sings his fee-bee song. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark.
12/18/2021
Steady rain and fog at one degree above freezing: bad luck for our Christmas Bird Count. Over the rain I hear crows, nuthatches, a chickadee.
12/15/2021
Patchy frost: the myrtle leaves that are dusted with it versus those that just have white edging. A chickadee is getting the gang together.
12/6/2021
Warmish. The sun almost emerges through thinning clouds, heralded by chickadees foraging high in the black birches at the edge of the woods.
2/12/2021
Overcast and cold. Juncos fight over patches of dirt scraped bare by the snow plow. A chickadee investigates the undersides of branches.