Overcast and cool. The irregular chirps of a cricket in the tall grass. A Canada goose flying over the ridge all alone honks twice.
crickets
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clear and cool. Falling walnut leaves spin through the deep shadows at the edge of the woods. Above the crickets, a distant motorcycle.
Hazy and warm. As the sun climbs, the cicada chorus grows, and the field cricket in the garden chirps faster and faster.
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.
Too warm for a coat, too cool for a t-shirt. And in the grass weighted down with dew, the murmur of crickets. It feels like autumn.
Sunrise, and the cricket music is augmented by a trio of chipping sparrows, the fledgling begging for food while its parents mate.
Overcast and humid. A Carolina wren trills in short bursts, as if in imitation of the crickets creaking in the long grass.
Sunny, warm, and quiet except for the distant wail of a locomotive, a phoebe calling at the woods’ edge, a cricket, the rustling of leaves.
In the half-light of dawn, white snakeroot glowing in the meadow, the unending shhhhh of tree crickets, clatter of a squirrel venturing out.
Back from London, my ears are still adjusting to the country. The unending insect thrum seems to come from some city hidden in the grass.