Waiting for rain, everything sounds like an augury—catbird, chipmunk, great-crested flycatcher—and just before the first drops, that hush.
chipmunk
3/9/2021
Almost warm, and the sky almost clear. Two chipmunks sit two feet apart on top of the wall, staring off in different directions.
3/5/2021
Sunny but cold. The woods-edge chipmunk scuttles back and forth. Tips of dead grasses hanging into the stream have new feet of ice.
3/3/2021
The glare ice between the trees flickers as a tiny figure races across it: the first chipmunk! Soon in furious pursuit of the second.
10/14/2020
The tock-tock-tock of a chipmunk up in the woods, relentless as a metronome. A red-tailed hawk lands in an oak and has a slow look around.
5/18/2019
Chipmunks chatter alarm up in the woods, and a moment later the squirrels. I remember the terrified bleating I heard at 1:30 in the morning.
3/3/2019
Sky and ground both flat white. A squirrel missing a quarter of her tail is fossicking through the snow, ignored by a high-speed chipmunk.
2/23/2019
Overcast. A song sparrow’s song. Chipmunks break their habitual solitude to dash across the hard snowpack, fighting, looking for mates.
2/11/2019
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I watch a chipmunk awoken from hibernation racing from covert to covert through the inch-deep snow.
9/22/2018
White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
2/25/2018
The rain finally stops. In the woods and yard, chipmunks zip back and forth like hyperactive exoparasites on the mountain’s glistening pelt.
2/20/2018
Sun shining through fog. The garden-wall chipmunk must be in heat: two suitors battle for her attention in what’s left of the snow.
2/18/2018
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.
1/29/2018
The same sort of day as yesterday, but so many more bird calls! A chipmunk emerges and goes on an inspection tour of the old stone wall.