Dark at sunrise, but only a sprinkle of rain. Up in the woods, a deer rustles through freshly fallen leaves, breakfasting on acorns.
white-tailed deer
A dozen geese come honking over the house, interrupting three crows sharing their excitement over a venison gut pile up in the woods.
In the half-light, a patter of hooves from just inside the woods. The grunts of a buck in rut. A dawn sky coming through the trees.
Overcast and still, with a low rumble of traffic from the east. In the half-light, a deer’s ear pivots among the goldenrod.
An orange moon gone slightly flat hangs in the southwest at dawn. An eight-point buck grazes under the old lilac.
The second cool morning in a row, but quieter and not quite as clear. A deer looks up at me more with annoyance than alarm and goes back to grazing.
The best way to summon a hummingbird, it seems, is with another hummingbird: as soon as one appears, there’s another to fight with it. A deer sneezes behind the springhouse.
Breezy and clear. A deer steps out of the woods, grunting softly to collect her fawn, who comes leaping through the purple pom-poms of dame’s-rocket.
A hair above freezing with rain tapering off. Two skinny deer, still in their gray-brown winter pelts, pick their way through the sodden vegetation.
Gray and still. A robin sings softly for a change. Two whitetails below my mother’s back porch bound up the hillside and out of sight.
Clear, cold (13F/-10C) and very quiet. Foraging deer have scraped a bare patch in the snow. A sliver of moon slips through the treetops.
Daybreak. A buck sniffing the ground for signs of estrus scratches his head with a back hoof. A mosquito sings into my ear.
Unseasonably warm with a lowering sky. A six-point buck emerges from the woods and struts over to the stream as a doe looks on.
Cold sunrise. The green hippogriff of a lilac just starting to yellow. Dry leaves whispering of deer in heat.