A small buck stalks past, his six-point rack held high, minutes before the sun tops the ridge. I can see some cold-weather gnats at the woods’ edge pogoing in the sunbeam. A bluebird up by the barn calls and calls.
white-tailed deer
With most of the forest understorey bare, one can see so much more through the trees: a full moon setting in the west, a flock of geese, the white tail of a deer retreating like a ghost into the dark mountain laurel bushes.
Sun in the treetops. A doe emerges from the woods to browse the road bank, followed by her two grown fawns already in their unspotted, gray-brown winter coats. Head up, her ears swivel toward a distant crow.
An hour past sunrise, one last, brief shower before it clears—or so I hope. A deer walks out of the woods and up the driveway, followed by a fawn whose spots are just beginning to fade.
An hour after sunrise the sky darkens again. At the first close rumble of thunder, a fawn leaps up out of the meadow and dashes into the woods.
Overcast and cool. Here and there, black walnut leaves are beginning to yellow. A deer foraging at the woods’ edge breaks into a trot to try to escape her flies.
Humid, cool and overcast at sunrise — an orange glow. Two thin deer wander through the meadow at the edge of the woods, lowering their heads for a mouthful of bracken, some grass, a goldenrod tip …
A yellow-throated vireo sings, right below the sun flooding through the canopy to half blind me. I hear the deer before I see her: a cracked twig, the sound of chewing.
Sun through thin clouds. A female cardinal foraging under the lilac picks up a twig, examines it, and sets it down again. Through the lilac limbs I spot the long legs of a deer picking her way across the road bank.
A raven with something red in its beak. Three running deer causing a fourth to raise and lower her tail. Patches of gold appear among the clouds.
Under a cacophony of jays, a doe and two fawns with their spots all gone graze just inside the edge of the woods. One does a sudden dance, spinning around to elude a fly.
Too cold for all but one hardy field cricket. In the meadow, the half-grown twin fawns have a go at their mother’s milk, one on each side. A small flock of geese go over, bugling.
Overcast and quiet. A doe and two fawns melt into the woods when I come out. In the meadow, this morning’s bindweed trumpets are already vibrating with bumblebees.
From fresh green to dark green to yellow and brown, the bracken is in a perpetual state of resurrection. Two fawns rush past, tormented by flies.