Cloudy and unseasonably warm at sunrise. My head throbs from watching election returns. A small buck walks by below the house sporting a single spike of antler—a unicorn.
deer
October 21, 2024
Wind rustling through fallen leaves in the moonlight. When it stops, I can hear the careful footsteps of a deer.
October 15, 2024
Three deer are running back and forth through the woods: flashes of white tails, the thunder of hooves. A small black birch nearly bare of leaves is a-flutter with kinglets.
October 8, 2024
Clear and cold. The red squirrel I’ve been hearing scold finally appears, racing up a bare walnut tree just as a deer hunter drags the first kill of the season out of the woods.
September 9, 2024
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft call.
August 24, 2024
Clear and still, except for some noise from the quarry—the crusher digesting its breakfast of stone. A deer’s footsteps up in the woods. A scolding squirrel.
July 15, 2024
Breezy and warm. Half of the leaves on the big tulip tree at the woods’ edge have turned yellow from the drought, and are beginning to fall. A deer coughs by the springhouse.
July 14, 2024
In the early morning coolness, a soft thunder of deer hooves up in the woods. From overhead, the calls of purple martins already on the wing.
July 3, 2024
A deer moves through the sunrise meadow, head and ears visible above the weeds. The furious chittering of a small flock of goldfinches swirling past.
June 25, 2024
Clear and cool. A deer snorts alarm up in the woods. A female cardinal picks a black raspberry on her way through my yard.
June 2, 2024
Heavily overcast and cool. Several deer are running back and forth in the woods, giving me glimpses of their red summer pelts. A thrasher sings a few bars and falls silent.
February 7, 2024
Cold and still all the way to the stars, which are just beginning to fade. A barred owl calls once. The hesitant footfalls of a deer coming down to drink.
November 5, 2023
Overcast sunrise for the return to standard time. The restless footsteps of a buck below the house, carrying his rack of bare branches into the woods.
October 27, 2023
Dark at sunrise, but only a sprinkle of rain. Up in the woods, a deer rustles through freshly fallen leaves, breakfasting on acorns.