Chickadee and nuthatch alarms are ringing over something in the tall weeds. A squirrel pauses beside the porch to scratch its ear.
chickadee
A distant quarry truck’s reverse beeper has gone bad, and trills just like a digital alarm clock. Dueling chickadees tumble through the air.
Two chickadees chase through the lilac and end up perched on adjacent twigs, ruffling their feathers—close as any pair of mobster enemies.
I stare bleary-eyed at a chickadee darting through the lilac, listen to dueting wrens. The sun, too, is blurred by a kind of mucous.
A scurf of snow in the north corner of the porch, and more flakes in the wind. A chickadee puffs out its feathers, fat as a baseball.
A true November day, cold and gray and wet. Patches of pale lichen on tree trunks glow like dim headlights in the fog. A distant chickadee.
A finger of sun infiltrates the foxtail millet, heads turned every direction but up. Three chickadees forage in the cherry, comparing notes.
When the fog lifts, a flock of chickadees moves in, foraging in the mid-canopy, precipitating a shower of birch and locust leaves.
Two titmice tumble off a branch, claws briefly locked, provoking rebukes from a chorus of chickadees. A breeze fails to disperse the fog.
The birches are astir with birds: migrant warblers, chickadees, and a kinglet darting from leaf to leaf, gold crown flashing among the gold.
A new half-inch of snow. The wind brings traffic noise from over the ridge and the nasal calls of a chickadee. A tree cracks its knuckles.
While chickadees call, a raven croaks, and snow glitters in the air, the sun steals above the horizon like a Hun, one blade at a time.
The sky takes half the morning to clear: deep blue of the almost-solstice above snowy limbs. The chickadee’s two notes in a minor key.
Soft-focus shadows from the high, thin clouds. Chickadees are calling chirree-chirrup, a car door slams, a crow goes yelling into the sun.