Overcast and cool. Buzzing and squeaking, a ruby-throated hummingbird circles a red bandanna hung out to dry.
clouds
June 13, 2025
Breezy and cool, with the sun guttering in cirrus. Over the course of an hour, I swat an astonishing diversity of small flies and gnats. It’s good to feel wanted, I suppose.
June 10, 2025
Everything wet and shining as the clouds move out. A towhee flies up to a low limb and rubs the caterpillar in his bill against the bark to remove its bristles.
June 3, 2025
A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.
June 2, 2025
Cold and crystal-clear, before the high-altitude smog from the burning forests of Canada shows up. On the end of a walnut limb, chipping sparrows are mating and foraging with their usual enthusiasm.
May 31, 2025
Sun through thin clouds and a cold breeze. A hummingbird buzzes in and circles the spot where a hummingbird feeder last hung four years ago.
May 30, 2025
A few clouds disappearing into deep blue on a morning so clear, I feel even I could do the gnatcatcher’s job and find each drifting speck of nutriment.
May 27, 2025
Overcast and cool. As the wood thrush fades in the distance, the brown thrasher parodies his song. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. The sun almost comes out.
May 25, 2025
A cold wind with thin clouds admitting a semblance of sunlight. The red-eyed vireo recites his refrain as doggedly as ever, not to be outdone by a downy woodpecker’s fast fills.
May 23, 2025
Mostly cloudy with a cold wind. Several ravens are having a noisy conclave in the treetops, their high, harsh vocals bringing in a pair of crows, who offer commentary from a safe distance.
May 18, 2025
In warbler season, even the wheezing of the wind seems open for interpretation: green-winged or oak-throated? The sky is achingly clear between the clouds.
May 17, 2025
A clearing wind. The wood thrush comes into the yard to sing as blue sky appears. The aspen I planted last year is already big enough to mime applause.
May 11, 2025
A few clouds at sunrise. Goldfinches chatter over the rap battles of ovenbirds and vireos. Bracken leaves are still opening in the yard—feathers on feathers.
May 8, 2025
Cool with a mix of thin clouds and murky blue. The buzzy, accelerating song of a Blackburnian warbler is interrupted by the buzzy, accelerating song of a Tennessee warbler.