common yellowthroat – The Morning Porch/Patio

Tuesday May 08, 2018

Dave Bonta May 8, 2018

The yellowthroat’s song is half submerged in noise from the quarry. A heron flies over. I watch my breath drift away toward the east.

Dave Bonta July 9, 2015

Red-eyed vireo, common yellowthroat, indigo bunting: the primary colors of this morning’s diminished chorus. The dog twitches in her sleep.

Dave Bonta April 30, 2015

A masked bird skulks through the lilac: the first common yellowthroat. Clouds gather, and the shadbush blossoms disappear into the sky.

Dave Bonta August 22, 2014

A trembling in the cattails: female yellowthroat. Birds flit through the treetops, smaller than the motes of grit in my ancient binoculars.

Dave Bonta May 1, 2012 2

An hour past sunrise. The downpour past, a Carolina wren and a common yellowthroat both sing in fast waltz time.

Dave Bonta April 27, 2011 8

A song so familiar it takes several minutes to register that this is new, the first I’ve heard it since last fall: common yellowthroat.

Dave Bonta June 15, 2010

A male yellowthroat flies from perch to perch without singing. It occurs to me that most of the music in my life wasn’t made for human ears.

Dave Bonta July 22, 2009

Gray and misty. A common yellowthroat keeps caroling back to a Carolina wren, until I have trouble remembering which “witchedy” is which.

Dave Bonta June 17, 2009

Breezy, overcast, a spit of rain—these reports never seem complete without the weather. The buzz of a hummingbird. A common yellowthroat.

Dave Bonta July 6, 2008

The yellowthroat’s witchedywitchedywitchedy woke me at dawn. Now he sits silent on a curved claw of dead elm, insouciant in his black mask.