Heavily overcast and cold. A half hour past sunrise, only a field sparrow, a red-eyed vireo and an ovenbird still sing. A few goldfinches chitter in the treetops.
field sparrow
Another cold, clear morning. I hear the low voices of birders mingling with the ovenbirds and field sparrows. The long-delayed leaf-out of frost-struck oaks lets the lusher understory shine, green-gold.
Foggy and damp. A catbird sings a few bars and falls silent. An hour later, a Baltimore oriole does the same. The field sparrows and towhees keep up their monotonous commentary.
Clear at sunrise, the western ridge brick-red above a meadow full of fog. Sound is out of the east, so field sparrows are answered by quarry truck beepers, and a pileated woodpecker by the grinding of rocks.
Overcast and cold and sunrise, with drips and drops that slowly coalesce into rain. My nostrils flare: the thirsty earth is already releasing petrichor. The field sparrows sing on.
A fraction of a degree above freezing. The early daffodils are already drooping, and all the brightness has drained from the forsythia after yesterday’s killer frost. A field sparrow’s rising note.
Clear and cool at sunrise. In the holiday-morning silence, a worm-eating warbler’s dry rattle in the woods accompanies the catbird singing in the yard and field sparrows in the meadow. A crow. The rumble of a jet.
Sun and a breeze have come to dry us out; everything shines and drips. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow sing back and forth across the woods’ edge.
Heavily overcast. A raven flies over with a falsetto croak. A field sparrow circles the house, declaring his territory.
A damp, gray dawn sweetened by the calls of field sparrows and a bluebird up by the barn. A small shower passes through the woods, rustling like a millipede in the dead leaves.
Cool and overcast, without a breath of wind. A branch breaks under the weight of a squirrel, who leaps to safety. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow trade licks.
A heavy white sky giving few hints of sunrise. In the distance, the faint bells of a wood thrush. A field sparrow’s accelerating rush toward silence.
Half awake at half-light. The dawn chorus starts promptly at 5:00 with field sparrow and towhee, then song sparrow, phoebe, robin. Train horn.
Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.