Orange light seeps down the western ridge. The half moon high overhead has been abandoned by its entourage of stars. A crow sits in a newly bare walnut tree, yelling.
American crow
Clear and still at sunrise, with a slightly harder light frost than yesterday. A crow yelling over the compost. A white-throated sparrow’s thin song.
Clear and cold, with more sky showing through the ridgetop trees. A raucous assembly of crows gives way to ravens—their resonant croaks.
Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds.
Overcast. Sunrise is when the crows wake up. A large brown moth tucks itself into the eaves.
Sunlight through the trees slowly growing sharper as high clouds thin out. A shadow-play of two silent crows. A falling petal.
Dawn comes during a break in the rain, building from one lone cardinal to a phoebe singing contest to a mob of crows. From the pipe under the road, a winter wren’s soft cascade.
Red sunrise. To the south, the moon has gone flat on one side so it resembles a giant ear for the first crow to yell into when it created the world. The chanting phoebe clearly has no inkling.
Very cold and still. The clear sky at dawn has gone white. Crows call to crows. The floorboards shiver when my furnace kicks on.
Sunrise. The resonant drum of a pileated woodpecker. A lone crow hops from perch to perch yelling Hey! Hey!
Overcast at dawn. A cold kiss—snowflakes in the air. When the sunrise comes, it’s only evident in the caws of crows.
One degree above freezing as the tall pines fill with sun. Two crows emerge from the woods, yelling about some old deer guts that must be just thawed enough for breakfast.
The western ridge is white with snow and more flakes spin down from thinning clouds, bellies turning orange against the blue. A crow kites overhead without flapping a wing.
A mottled gray sky all the way to the horizon, not brightening even for the sunrise, let alone for the crows with their many complaints or the red-bellied woodpecker jeering from the top of a black locust.