White sky, bleary sun. Cold air, hot coffee. That equinoctial balance. Crickets trill, chipmunks tick, aspen leaves flip back and forth.
crickets
September 14, 2018
The dampness thickens into drizzle. Its soundtrack: the unending trill of tree crickets. The forest begins to glisten like a salamander.
October 2, 2017
Another cold, clear morning. When the jays and squirrels stop yammering, the silence seems unusually thick. Then it hits me: no crickets.
September 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.
September 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.
August 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.
August 3, 2016
Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
June 14, 2016
A cricket in the wall chirps more quickly now that the sun is on it. I sneeze and he falls silent. A great spangled fritillary careens past.
September 27, 2015
Two crickets are having a singing contest among the stiltgrass, which is now quite red and swept back in one direction as if with a comb.
September 13, 2015
Windy and cool; the sun goes in and out. A flock of wild geese—their raucous cries. In the silence that follows, a tree cricket’s trill.
August 31, 2015
In the course of an hour, the only bird calls are from a couple of crows. But there are four kinds of crickets, a cicada, a distant jet.
August 25, 2015
Clear and cool. Falling walnut leaves spin through the deep shadows at the edge of the woods. Above the crickets, a distant motorcycle.
August 15, 2015
Hazy and warm. As the sun climbs, the cicada chorus grows, and the field cricket in the garden chirps faster and faster.
August 12, 2015
Cloudy and cool. Cricket trills and ticks are joined by chipmunk tocks. A tulip tree leaf sails in wide circles with its stem for a rudder.