Cool and quiet, once all the newly arrived night travelers have stopped chirping. Patches of blue sky appear. A goldfinch twitters half-heartedly.
American goldfinch
8/10/2023
It’s raining and I’m mesmerized by the radar map, its blue and purple blobs. When the downpour begins to abate, the first thing I hear is the twittering of goldfinches.
7/20/2023
Nuthatch scolding a gray squirrel, who scratches himself with a hind leg. The rising sun takes its place among the goldfinches.
6/21/2023
The sun rising through high-altitude murk isn’t much brighter than the goldfinches chattering in the treetops, less than three hours till the solstice.
5/27/2023
Another clear, cold morning with little dew. Goldfinches gad about in the tops of the locusts, seemingly oblivious to other birds’ territorial obsessions.
4/29/2023
Thin fog full of goldfinch chatter and turkey gobbling. A rare red squirrel emerges from the woods and zips all around the springhouse.
4/25/2023
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
8/8/2022
Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.
7/21/2022
A few minutes before sunrise. Goldfinch chatter. A half-slice of moon hangs in the east like an icon of wintry cool.
7/13/2022
Cool and clear. An asterisk of thistledown floats by—high time for the goldfinches to be nesting, I think. But they’re still gadding about in the treetops.
6/8/2022
Clear and cool. A bright yellow goldfinch circles the yard still in shadow, chattering like a bearer of sunlit news.
4/21/2022
Heavily overcast. The patchy yellow of a goldfinch and the spicebush he sits in, grooming his breast feathers.
12/24/2021
Moonlight fades but the driveway glows even whiter: a new quarter-inch of snow. The sky is clear. Treetop goldfinches start to chatter.
12/17/2021
Mid-morning sun through thin clouds. A wren calls in one direction; goldfinches in another. The yard’s only mullein stalk trembles in the wind.