A sunrise in layers of orange and gray makes the absence of color below in the snow seem absolutely surreal. Three crows fly over the house. The furnace rumbles awake.
American crow
In the clouds, where rain has nearly erased the remains of the snow. A slow and steady procession of drips gets interrupted by a crow.
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues.
Windy and gray. The only signs to distinguish the sunrise are a sudden outburst of crow calls in the distance and an upwelling of white-throated sparrow song.
The sun rises an hour earlier, heralded by the usual motley assortment of sparrows, wrens and corvids. The stratosphere breaks out into a rash of clouds.
Clear and still, with frost in the yard lingering well into mid-morning. A lone crow with the sun on its wings disappears off to the east.
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.
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.