goldfinches

Saturday October 01, 2016

Dave Bonta October 1, 2016

Mist turns into drizzle. A small, filmy-winged fly drifts back and forth across the yard, heedless as a texting teen. A goldfinch monologue.

Dave Bonta July 15, 2016

The continual, three-syllable chatter of goldfinches. Wild garlic stalks have begun to straighten and the heads to shed their white masks.

Dave Bonta July 9, 2016

The humidity has dropped at last. A goldfinch lands on a stalk of purple bergamot, bobbing in the breeze like an extra, yellow flower.

Dave Bonta March 26, 2016

Clear and cold. The continual, waxy chatter of goldfinches, their plumage now a patchwork of winter’s dull green and summer’s crayon yellow.

Dave Bonta July 19, 2015

Now that thistles are going to seed, the goldfinches are nesting at last. Two males chase—streaks of crayon-yellow through the treetops.

Dave Bonta June 27, 2015 1

Fragments of vireo and goldfinch song mingle with the rain’s thunderous applause. A few filmy-winged insects still somehow manage to fly.

Dave Bonta December 26, 2014

The sky is clearing, the low-angled, mid-morning sun illuminating the woods for minutes at a time. Finches in the birches. A distant raven.

Dave Bonta November 19, 2014 1

Bitter cold; even the sun looks brittle. I savor the silence, broken only by goldfinch warble and the scattered calls of robins.

Dave Bonta November 4, 2014

Warmer and overcast. The silhouettes of small birds feeding gregariously in the top of a black birch—goldfinches, I realize when they fly.

Dave Bonta September 10, 2014 3

It looks like rain, it smells like rain, but the morning passes without a drop. The goldfinches carry on being garrulous. A tree frog calls.