It’s actually cold—54F/12C! A crow at the top of the tallest locust where the sun strikes has one thing to say and she is saying it.
American crow
Bare branches mellowing the sun’s blaze. Two crows fly into the woods and one flies out. There are eight million stories in the naked forest.
Rain tapping on the porch roof. Robin song echoes off the hillside. From down-hollow, the sound of a crow mob.
The sky clears at about the same rate as caffeine clears my head—a transitory state, no doubt, and host to a mob of crows.
Gray with occasional showers. Distant crows. The face that I can’t unsee in the big red maple trunk with its expression of perpetual dismay.
Instead of the gloomy morning I was expecting, the sky’s clear and there’s a fresh inch of dry snow. The crows are still exclaiming over it.
Clear and still, with yesterday’s snow still clinging to the trees. Bergamot seedheads sport wizards’ caps. Crows yell about the sunrise.
A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
Clear at dawn. The extended gargle of a jake-braking truck. A crow flies silently overhead and returns a minute later with its call.
A scurf of fresh snow. Crows getting told off by a raven. Bright patches in the sky—which holds the sun?
A lone crow like a town crier repeating the same bit of news: how the rising sun, newly naked, is ablaze beneath the crowns of the oaks.
Four small patches of blue sky huddle together like blue sheep in a white woolen sky. The wingbeats of crows.
The last clear morning for a while. A red-tailed hawk flies through the bare birches, trailed by two outraged crows.
Clear and still. A double splat of black walnuts onto the driveway. At the top of an oak, a crow grooms itself with a soft clicking sound.