Sunny and warm with an inversion layer: the clamor of traffic from I-99 and a mist-filled forest. Filmy-winged insects begin to appear.
fog
Trees glistening with raindrops cast shadows through the rising fog. A sudden ripple of squirrel alarm-calls as a hawk cuts through.
Fog from the valley spills over the ridgetop and advances on the porch. The jays start calling, unable to see each other in adjacent trees.
Sunbeams through the fog. The thin bull thistle beside the road with its one purple head sways ever so slightly into and out of the light.
Tent caterpillar webs billow, white as sails—still full of the dawn fog. Two nuthatches kvetch back and forth at the woods’ edge.
Thin fog. A flicker is excavating a den hole in the dead elm on the other side of the yard, his head almost disappearing into the tree.
Thin fog. A yearling fawn play-mounts his mother, and is mounted in turn by his twin. A robin tut-tut-tuts from the driveway.
Thick fog and silence, punctuated by the low, almost infrasonic throbs of a drumming grouse. The nasal cries of a fish crow pass overhead.
Ground fog up in the field glows faintly orange in the sunrise. Under the old dog statue, a cartoon yelp of yellow: the first daffodil.
Deer have been eating the wild rosebush again, and the yard is a maze of rabbit tracks. The fog lifts for a minute, then returns.
Cool and damp. The low-hanging clouds catch on the treetops. Crows signal their locations with almost every wingbeat.
Fog. High in a skeletal birch, the silhouettes of ten goldfinches are almost the right size for leaves, moving in their own slow wind.
Dense fog and silence—the instant wilderness found inside a cloud. A leaf falls 100 feet away and I hear the soft rustle when it lands.
Rain and fog. A pileated woodpecker performs invasive surgery on a locust tree next to the springhouse, removing a malignant colony of ants.