A coal tit lands at the feeder and I do a double-take—so much like a chickadee! Then in the next garden, a gray squirrel’s querulous alarm.
gray squirrel
Sunday July 22, 2018
Hot and humid. A skinny squirrel slinks through the mock orange and elder tree, trailed by the anxious trills of a robin.
Sunday May 20, 2018
A jet roars overhead en route to Heathrow. The rattling call of a magpie. An American gray squirrel lopes along the top of the back wall.
Sunday May 06, 2018
The all-night rain has eased into drizzle. A drenched squirrel plods through the yard. A catbird appears on a branch and sings half a note.
Wednesday May 02, 2018
A squirrel emerges beside the one white miniature daffodil, just coming into bloom as the others shrivel. A Baltimore oriole’s glossy song.
Tuesday April 17, 2018
Snow in the air and here and there on the ground: unseasonable seasoning. A gray squirrel bounds up the gray road, all smoke and tailpipe.
Tuesday April 03, 2018
Cold rain and fog. A squirrel disappears into the old flicker den hole in the dead elm, that smooth, ruined column at the edge of the yard.
Wednesday March 21, 2018
It’s the absence of sound that makes a snowstorm so disquieting. A squirrel plows its way through snow-laden treetops—a slow-moving cascade.
Sunday March 18, 2018
A squirrel leaps out of a tree, falls 20 feet to the ground and runs off. The dog stares mournfully at a pool of bile she’s just thrown up.
Wednesday February 28, 2018
Bright sun on bare trees, whose discarded leaves still glow. Squirrels scold on and on. Finally a hawk-shaped shadow detaches from an oak.