The banks of moss above the road shine bright after last night’s rain. Two chickadees sing their spring songs as snowflakes fill the air.
chickadee
December 14, 2018
Warmish and almost sunny, with mist between the trees. The chickadees and wrens are denouncing something hidden in the small hollow maple.
November 28, 2018
Bitter wind, its shifts and cross-currents discernible in wide-spaced flakes. A chickadee’s call: the one for putting rivals in their place.
November 14, 2018
Two degrees below freezing. The sun is a bright smear in what could be a snow sky. A chickadee sings seemingly to itself.
November 4, 2018
Yard seething with birds: sparrows, chickadees, a brown creeper. A raven flies past with something in its bill, wings going pfft pfft pfft.
October 30, 2018
Two tulip poplar leaves vibrate in a private wind: chickadees. The western ridge turns from blood-red to orange to yellow—autumn in reverse.
October 22, 2018
Since 10:00 o’clock, the clouds that left have not been replaced. I find myself paying close attention to the nasal calls of chickadees.
March 8, 2018
Sunny and cool. Above the steady tapping of meltwater from the top roof, the nearly constant calling or singing of chickadees.
March 3, 2018
Titmouse, chickadee, wren. I squint into the sun. The bitter wind rattles the cover of the magazine beside me—which, I notice, is Rattle.
February 18, 2018
In the shadows of the treetops, two chipmunks race over and under the three inches of fresh, wet snow. A chickadee sings his spring song.
December 22, 2017
The neighbor’s rooster crows a few times and falls silent, as if appalled by the gloom. Even a chickadee manages to sound querulous.
December 16, 2017
The yard is crisscrossed by fresh tracks of animals. A chickadee lands in a fretwork spandrel and peers intently at the old hornets’ nest.
December 11, 2017
Scattered chickadee calls coalesce into a heated argument. The sun emerges for half a minute through a vulva-shaped opening in the clouds.
December 8, 2017
Cold and still under a flat white sky. Then calls of chickadees, excited about the least thing. A Carolina wren pops up to scold the dog.