If the sun isn’t going to shine, we still have the irises, the evening primroses, and a goldfinch fresh from his bath: a trifecta of yellow.
American goldfinch
The sun peeks through a hole in the clouds, turning the drizzle into a feathery shimmer—visual equivalent of the finches’ endless warbling.
Quiet save for water gurgling under the yard. Small patches of blue sky slowly merge. The sun comes out to a burst of goldfinch notes.
Sunrise: a glimpse of yellow from beneath the lid of clouds. Goldfinches flutter down to drink from the stream’s thin fissure of open water.
In one direction, the waxy chatter of goldfinches; in the other, a mob of crows. I go in before the sun comes out—my legs are too cold.
A slit in the gray clouds widening to reveal the sun, like a sudden eye. Goldfinches feasting in the crown of a birch become silhouettes.
Just below freezing; the snow lays here and melts there. A flock of finches in the treetops—punctuation marks in search of a sentence.
Cedar waxwings crowd into the tops of the tall locusts, harried by goldfinches. High above, two swifts arc and swoop against the blue.
Crystal-clear sky crossed by flocks of goldfinches. Church bells clang the 8 o’clock hour, a sad exultation that once meant time for school.
Hard to pin-point the emotions evoked by familiar bird calls, beyond just “blue jay feeling,” “nuthatch feeling,” “goldfinch feeling.”
When the rain finally slackens off, I can hear a vireo, goldfinches, the catbird, a train horn, and the throaty roar of a well-fed creek.
Overcast and cold. Goldfinches flit through the yard, one of them already in his summer molt: pace Frost, their first gold is green.
Windy and cold. The rising sun peeks out from beneath a lid of clouds: in the sudden glow, goldfinches, their squeaky calls.
Goldfinches repopulate a leafless birch and sit eating seeds. From the east, the sound of the quarry’s crusher, its breakfast of stones.