Overcast and cool. Two deer run into the woods as another snorts alarm up in the field. Another hummingbird buzzes me, ruby gorget ablaze.
white-tailed deer
Fog and mizzle. The usual doe and fawn graze in the springhouse meadow, their ears swivelling above the sodden vegetation.
A deer grazes a few feet away; I can hear blades of grass tearing. The sun almost breaks through a thin spot in the clouds.
Three squirrels are having a to-do on the porch as if I’m not here, running back and forth under my chair. A deer in the driveway turns her head to watch.
On a dark morning, fall colors that seemed bland yesterday are bright embers. Behind the still-green lilac, a deer’s pale legs.
Fog at sunrise. A doe leads her two grown fawns to the wild apple tree—an exuberant clatter of hooves.
Almost fall. The motherless fawn running out of the woods has lost its spots but not its cloud of flies.
This year for the first time deer have not eaten all the bracken in my yard. One frond is already yellowing like the skeleton of some unlikely fish.
Sunrise. A snort from the deer who sleeps under the crabapple tree. A hummingbird zips past the wild garlic.
Overcast and cool. A clatter of hooves on moss as a half-grown fawn runs past, just inside the woods’ edge. The distant ringing of a phone.
A doe picks her way through the rain-soaked meadow, fawn scrambling along behind. A cerulean warbler’s ascending song.
Venus in the dawn sky. Phoebe, field sparrow, wood pewee. The alarm-snorts of a deer.
Thin fog at sunrise. Four deer in the yard ignore me only to stamp and snort at a small black cat.
Dawn. Two wrens rustle awake inside the old hornets’ nest. A doe and her nearly grown fawn graze in the yard.