Crystal-clear. Treetops stained with sun. A gray squirrel pours itself into the lilac. The creek’s full-throated chorus.
gray squirrel
Friday April 01, 2022
After sunrise, a brief interval of soft light before rain clouds close in. The tulip tree hosts a slow-moving ménage à trois of squirrels.
Sunday March 20, 2022
Cold and gloomy—classic March weather for the equinox. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the treetops, underneath which two squirrels chase, oblivious.
Wednesday February 23, 2022
Unseasonably warm and overcast. Up in the woods, squirrels nose through leaf duff newly liberated from the snow. A few drops of rain.
Friday February 04, 2022
Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
Saturday January 29, 2022
Cold and quiet. A junco foraging in the stiltgrass chirps after every beakful. A five-squirrel parade snakes past the yard: mating season.
Sunday January 23, 2022
A warmer morning, and all the birds are calling: Carolina wren, robin, crows, a flicker. Squirrels chase back and forth across the snow.
Thursday December 23, 2021
Overcast and cold. A chickadee foraging at the woods’ edge sings his fee-bee song. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark.
Friday December 10, 2021
Finches cluster high in a black birch, gorging in silence. A squirrel digs up a walnut and re-buries it on the other side of the road.
Wednesday December 01, 2021
The first day of meteorological winter. It’s warm. I-99 is barely audible. The sound of teeth on walnut shell alternates with scold-calls.
Saturday October 30, 2021
Fog. A squirrel is peeling ribbons of bark from the branches of the big tulip tree. And all these years I’ve been blaming porcupines!
Sunday October 17, 2021
Cloudy and cold. In the thinning treetops, a squirrel takes a wild leap to lose a suitor. Tulip tree samaras helicopter down.
Sunday June 27, 2021
Perhaps just a bit fewer mosquitoes this morning. The double knock of a stone shifting under a squirrel’s weight.
Wednesday June 02, 2021
Four goldfinches take an intense discussion all around the yard. Two squirrels travel together much more slowly—must be mating season again.