Thick fog prolongs the dawn light for hours. A screech owl is answered by a pileated woodpecker, dirge giving way to second-line ululation.
fog
10/5/2008
Through the darkness and fog, loud thuds from the black walnut trees that encircle the houses, a slow carpet bombing that goes on for weeks.
10/1/2008
A pileated woodpecker hammers on a dead tree, resonant as it never was in life. I watch ground fog form and dissipate into a clear dawn sky.
9/27/2008
First one, then a second Carolina wren pops out from under the eaves, perches in the fretwork for a second, and flies off into the fog.
9/21/2008
In the pre-dawn, Sunday-morning silence, the distant bellowing of a cow. A half moon glows through the fog — a thin milk.
8/30/2008
Out of the darkness and fog before dawn, a sudden yelp. Only when it moves farther off am I able to place it: a raccoon. The newest tenant.
8/29/2008
Rain and fog. Nuthatches, a wood pewee, the liquid song of a winter wren. Behind me, loud thumps from some large animal under the house.
7/8/2008
The little wood satyr I first spotted yesterday flutters up from the side garden, yellow-rimmed eyespots like dim headlights in the fog.
6/4/2008
Foggy morning. A short-lived bright period brings a faint sound of traffic from I-99. I hear the hummingbird’s small motor in the garden.
4/4/2008
Somewhere in the fog, a red-winged blackbird, a pair of mourning doves, a robin, a flock of finches. Half an hour later, nothing but rain.
3/28/2008
Thick fog blanks everything but the noise from the highway—this could be New Jersey. Rain beads on the branches of the ornamental cherry.
3/19/2008
Hours of hard rain have brought out the green in tree trunks and branches, in laurel leaves, in moss. Even the fog has a slight green cast.
3/4/2008
Rain and fog. A robin drops into the barberry bush, tut-tutting. Up in the woods, two deer stand with their heads buried in the soft snow.
2/6/2008
Ground-level clouds appear and disappear in the half-dark; even the thermometer is fogged up. Over the roar of the stream, a robin’s song.