Clear and still. A chipmunk chips from her hole in the rock wall beside the porch, getting a much more resonant sound than her rival up in the woods.
chipmunks
September 6, 2024
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome.
May 25, 2024
Another cool morning. The chipmunk who lives under the lilac races across the road, tail like the upright stem on a quarter note. The peonies’ pale fists are opening, one by one.
May 10, 2024
Steady rain. A gnatcatcher flutters to find breakfast on the undersides of leaves, then retreats to the shelter of the lilac to shake the water off. A chipmunk runs under my chair to eat one seed at the far end of the porch.
May 9, 2024
Cool and increasingly cloudy as the sun clears the treetops—a bright spot in the gray. A rose-breasted grosbeak sings. Chipmunk metronomes go in and out of sync.
February 19, 2024
Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch the clouds turn colors.
January 30, 2024
Overcast and quiet except for the watery chorus. A chipmunk dashes across a patch of snow and disappears under the house.
October 18, 2023
A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
October 13, 2023
Six degrees above freezing and clear at sunrise. The spicebushes next to the road are at their most luminous yellow. Chipmunks tick like asynchronous clocks.
September 20, 2023
Clearing enough by 8:00 for the sun to nest in the treetops. Highway noise subsides, giving way to the knocks and clatter of falling walnuts and acorns, the scold-calls of chipmunks, the jeers of jays.
September 11, 2023
Still overcast, but with a bit of a breeze. From the woods’ edge, the chick-burr call of a scarlet tanager. A chipmunk’s incessant metronome.
June 5, 2023
Cool with thin clouds. Two wood thrushes fly into the woods, dead grass trailing from the leader’s beak. A chipmunk runs under my chair.
February 27, 2023
Sun through thin clouds; a quiet morning. Three chipmunks, one after another, cross the yard and go under my porch. Either someone’s in heat, or they’re plotting to overthrow me.
February 23, 2023
Mist rises from yesterday’s half inch of icy snow. A robin briefly joins the dawn chorus. The front-garden chipmunk returns from the woods with bulging cheeks.