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.
chipmunks
5/10/2024
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.
5/9/2024
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.
2/19/2024
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.
1/30/2024
Overcast and quiet except for the watery chorus. A chipmunk dashes across a patch of snow and disappears under the house.
10/18/2023
A flat white sky crossed by a crow. Woods’-edge chipmunks in a chipping contest. The color.
10/13/2023
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.
9/20/2023
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.
9/11/2023
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.
6/5/2023
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.
2/27/2023
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.
2/23/2023
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.
2/18/2023
Sun blazing through the trees illuminates lost snowflakes, miles from the nearest cloud. A chipmunk with hibernation insomnia races up the driveway.
10/22/2022
Clear and still. I watch the sun inch through the half-turned canopies of the oaks. A chipmunk begins his morning chant.