Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
American goldfinch
July 30, 2025
Clear and still at sunrise, with a sheen of dew on the meadow. A screech owl trills in the distance, nearly drowned out by goldfinches.
July 22, 2025
Cool as an autumn morning, with twittering goldfinches in lieu of yellow leaves. Just inside the woods’ edge, two deer chase back and forth, pausing for breath six feet apart.
July 16, 2025
White sun in a white sky crossed by crows. Twittering goldfinches have the mid-morning chorus mostly to themselves, aside from one dogged towhee.
July 3, 2025
Out at dawn for the cardinal’s opening salvo and a mosquito nuzzling my neck. The twittering of goldfinches. An east-bound freight blows its horn.
June 24, 2025
Day three of the heat wave. The cicadas have been calling since before dawn. Two goldfinches yellower than the sun come chittering out of the treetops and swoop past the porch.
June 11, 2025
Cool and mostly clear at sunrise. A goldfinch chirping in pentameter. The cerulean warbler changes trees—a blue-striped blur.
June 3, 2025
A lurid sun glimmers through high-altitude haze. Somewhere in the deep grass a hen turkey calls to her poults, as goldfinches party it up in the treetops.
May 11, 2025
A few clouds at sunrise. Goldfinches chatter over the rap battles of ovenbirds and vireos. Bracken leaves are still opening in the yard—feathers on feathers.
May 7, 2025
From sun to gloom to sun again in less than an hour. The vireos, ovenbirds, goldfinches and gnatcatchers chatter on regardless, interrupted only by a great crested flycatcher’s stentorian call.
April 18, 2025
The sun is at half-power, shining through cirrus clouds, the still-bare branches of oaks and black birches, and the trill of a goldfinch, which shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.
April 14, 2025
Against the gray sky, one small dash of yellow at the woods’ edge: a male goldfinch. Nearby, the slow chant of a blue-headed vireo.
December 19, 2024
Overcast, but with more brightness than gloom. On the forest floor, a barely-there lacework of snow. Somewhere in between, a goldfinch’s warble.
November 27, 2024
An hour late for sunrise, I’m consoled by a radiance in the clouds, a sheen on the forest floor, a twittering of goldfinches.