Rainy and cool. A pair of goldfinches spiral up from the meadow, twittering. I find a dead ant in my last mouthful of coffee.
American goldfinch
In a soft light filtered by high clouds, trees framed by a fog of new leaves. After each burst of wren song, the goldfinch commentaries.
From the greening-up lilac and the blooming forsythia, a steady chatter of goldfinches, their own plumage now turned from green to yellow.
The sun rising through the trees off to the southeast seems so much less ambitious than last night’s moon. Goldfinches’ desultory chirps.
Around the side of the house, a male goldfinch gorges on spicebush berries—silent for once, as if unwilling to share his find.
Even hanging upside-down from a Canada thistle and stuffing her beak with thistledown, the goldfinch never stops chittering.
Ten percent of the tulip tree’s leaves have turned yellow in response to the drought. Goldfinches pass through like a yellow wind.
Half molted now, a patchwork of yellow and green, the goldfinch goes twittering past the crabapple’s half-open blooms.
Warmth without shadows, the gossip of goldfinches like a single bright thread. The rabbit doesn’t chance a dash across the yard.
The sound of an altercation among the goldfinches—like a dozen jazz soloists playing at once. The only cloud in the sky finds the sun.
Fog. High in a skeletal birch, the silhouettes of ten goldfinches are almost the right size for leaves, moving in their own slow wind.
A male and female goldfinch glean seeds from a tall bull thistle. She eats in silence while he in his loud yellow suit chatters on and on.
Goldfinches twitter in the tops of the locusts at sunrise, bright as beacons. A yellow hoverfly watches me from four inches away.
Goldfinch in the garden: a coneflower stem breaks under his weight and he moves to another, probing the dark centers for a hint of seed.