Sunrise layers of yellow and blue, cloud and clear. High in a black birch, two chickadees feed and squabble.
chickadee
Monday January 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.
Tuesday January 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.
Friday December 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.
Saturday December 03, 2022
Cold rain. Four chickadees in a high-speed chase around the yard pause in the lilac for a vociferous exchange of views.
Tuesday October 04, 2022
How can it be so yellow out and yet so cold? But the winter birds sound happy: chickadees, nuthatches, a red-bellied woodpecker.
Friday March 04, 2022
Sunrise. Trees popping in the cold (11F/-11C). A chickadee adds a rare, third note to his spring song.
Tuesday February 08, 2022
Scattered snowflakes like free-range musical notation for scattered chirps—chickadee, nuthatch. A hint of sunrise fading from the clouds.
Thursday December 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.
Saturday December 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.
Wednesday December 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.
Monday December 06, 2021
Warmish. The sun almost emerges through thinning clouds, heralded by chickadees foraging high in the black birches at the edge of the woods.
Friday February 12, 2021
Overcast and cold. Juncos fight over patches of dirt scraped bare by the snow plow. A chickadee investigates the undersides of branches.
Friday January 15, 2021
An unfeasibly large number of chickadees foraging along the woods’ edge, calling, singing, dangling from black birch twigs like mutant fruit.