Overcast with fog that thins out for the purported sunrise. It’s warm enough that one tree cricket trills in the herb garden.
crickets
8/10/2022
Milk-white sky and the white noise of tree crickets. A pileated woodpecker cackles to herself at the top of a tall locust.
9/23/2021
The first full day of astronomical autumn dawns to downpour. A cricket in the garden scrapes out a last few, scattered notes.
9/1/2021
Rain thickens toward mid-morning as the ex-hurricane moves through. One cricket still calls from the shelter of peony leaves.
8/23/2021
The meadow and its crickets. The full moon emerges from the clouds upside-down in every drop of dew.
8/18/2021
Rain and warblers. An earth-shaking blast from the quarry two miles away. The soft susurrus of tree crickets.
9/16/2020
Sun grown vague with haze from the burning of the west. The drone note of tree crickets, so much more introspective than cicadas.
9/27/2018
Overcast and cool. Birds only call at intervals now. Crickets’ chirps are as small and repetitive as the blossoms on the white heath aster.
9/22/2018
White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
9/14/2018
The dampness thickens into drizzle. Its soundtrack: the unending trill of tree crickets. The forest begins to glisten like a salamander.
10/2/2017
Another cold, clear morning. When the jays and squirrels stop yammering, the silence seems unusually thick. Then it hits me: no crickets.
9/14/2017
Small birds flit through the tops of the locust trees—migrating warblers, no doubt. Birds of passage. Every now and then the cricket pauses.
9/13/2016
A catbird calls so incessantly I begin to doubt it’s a catbird until it flies past. You can’t hear the ocean here but we have tree crickets.
8/6/2016
Hard rain for less than a minute followed by an hour of dripping, accompanied by a cricket chorus. Pale soapwort flowers glow in the sun.