A damp and gloomy sunrise. Juncos twitter in the tops of black birches. A cowbird’s liquid note.
cowbird
March 30, 2025
Daffodils are open under a gray-wool sky. A cowbird’s liquid note. Up by the garage, a towhee is calling.
March 28, 2024
A band of salmon-colored cloud above the horizon half an hour past sunrise. From the top branch of a walnut tree, a brown-headed cowbird sings his single, complex note.
June 18, 2023
The light is still murky and cool at mid-morning as lulls in the avian chorus lengthen. The breeze riffling through walnut leaves. A cowbird’s liquid note.
March 16, 2022
Only one, tiny patch of snow remains in view, sheltering on the north side of a laurel thicket. A cowbird’s liquid note.
March 19, 2020
The rain eases off by midday but the cowbird at the top of a tall black locust tree continues to spill his single, liquid note.
April 10, 2019
Sunny but cooler. The liquid note of a cowbird in the yard. A question mark butterfly careens around the house and collides with my shoe.
April 22, 2016
Overcast and damp. A tom turkey’s lusty declarations echo off the hillside, punctuated by the crisp, interrogatory whistles of a cowbird.
March 24, 2016
The sun shines through gauzy clouds, giving the morning a faded-photo effect. A squirrel drinks from the stream. A cowbird’s liquid note.
March 27, 2014
A second male phoebe has returned. Their warring warbles echo off the hillside at sunrise, interspersed with a cowbird’s liquid notes.
March 18, 2012
A brown-headed cowbird perches, as always, at the top of the tallest tree in the yard to maximize the reach of his one-second gurgle.
April 26, 2010
Drum of rain on the roof and the birds sound distant—robin, field sparrow, cowbird—the world greener than it’s been in seven months.
June 18, 2009
The black-robed cowbird at the top of the dead elm burbles authoritatively, like the Grand Ayatollah of the yard taking credit for the rain.
April 5, 2009
Twelve cowbirds in the sunlit crown of a walnut tree take turns with their single, liquid syllable, the blue sky gurgling in every ditch.