Humid, overcast and warm. Half-way between the crickets in the grass and the cicadas in the treetops, the Carolina wren’s teakettle teakettle teakettle lets off steam.
cicadas
Cloudless and cool. The cicadas start up before it even reaches 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Sunlight pools at the entrance to the trail into the woods. Half the bracken fronds in the yard have turned bronze.
Cool and mostly clear. A raven croaks loudly from the vicinty of the powerline, just after the bird app tells me American Crow is my Bird of the Day. The smell of woodsmoke. A dog-day cicada starts up.
Breezy and cool. The sun glimmers through thin clouds, prompting a Linne’s cicada to call—that stuttering buzz. A bluebird sings up by the shed.
An hour past sunrise, the first cicada call of the day stutters to a stop halfway through and resumes a half-hour later. Mosquitoes circle my feet propped up on the balustrade.
Mid-morning and the sun is just struggling free of clouds and/or smoke. A chicken cackles in the distance. Annual cicadas exchange raspy notes.
Overcast, humid and cool. A bang from the back roof—an aborted walnut. The sun comes out for a few seconds. One of the last 17-year cicadas falls silent again.
Thin fog, or just very thick humidity? But it’s still cool enough to enjoy the slanting sunbeams, the tired-sounding cicadas, the catbird’s jazz.
Day three of the heat wave. The cicadas have been calling since before dawn. Two goldfinches yellower than the sun come chittering out of the treetops and swoop past the porch.
Breezy and clear. A cicada lands on the chair beside me and emits a brief, mechanical purr, red eyes glowing like the lights on an ambulance, before flying directly into a railing, dropping to the floor and relaunching into the yard.
Breezy and cool—a front at last. A train keens in the distance. The whispery discourse of trees in which cicadas have lapsed for a few long moments into silence.
Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
The white noise of cicadas gives voice to the fog. I spot a second-year common mullein just beginning to raise her flagpole, velvety leaves wearing coats of cloud.
An intensely green lushness makes an orphan out of the brown pile of juniper cuttings at the woods’ edge—last winter’s one spot of green. At 7:10, in the pouring rain, the first cicada starts up.