Overcast. Random knocks from an unseen woodpecker. A white-breasted nuthatch’s nervous call punctuates a wood pewee’s song.
eastern wood pewee
The rain stops and the thrush singing at the woods’ edge is joined by warblers, flycatchers, pewee, thrasher, a hummingbird’s mad courtship flight…
A brief glimpse of sun through the mist and rain-soaked leaves. Then back to the humdrum of pewee and pileated woodpecker.
5:02. Wood pewee. The first bird call of dawn, or insomnia’s last hurrah? Two minutes later, the chorus starts up.
Out in time for the tail end of the dawn chorus: field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, pewee, goldfinches, catbird. No more wood thrushes, alas.
In the growing heat, a wood pewee flies from perch to perch, singing, circling the house. I feel as if I’m being ensorcelled.
Venus in the dawn sky. Phoebe, field sparrow, wood pewee. The alarm-snorts of a deer.
A mid-air tangle between a phoebe and a wood pewee ends with the latter calling once from a walnut branch and flying back into the woods.
Up early enough for the last of the dawn fog and the wood pewee’s dreamy chant. Two rabbits graze side-by-side in the road.
Humid and warm—our first truly summer-like day. The wood pewee, who just returned yesterday, drawls his two-note song from the woods’ edge.
Bright sun after last night’s long-awaited rain. A chipmunk races down the road with cheek pouches bulging. A wood pewee’s melancholy call.
International Migratory Bird Day. From a tall locust, the lazy call of an eastern wood pewee—last migrant back. A mosquito pierces my cheek.
Clear and cold. A blue-headed vireo calls from a sun-drenched treetop in the yard, answered only by the resident wood pewee.
Clear and cool, but in the woods, last night’s rain is still reaching the ground, drop by shining drop. A wood pewee’s eponymous drawl.