Wood thrushes dart back and forth; three squirrel species briefly converge. My yard is less comprehensible to me than a street in Bangkok.
gray squirrel
Gray squirrel in a walnut tree gnawing on a walnut, fox squirrel in a maple feasting on maple keys: one spits out shells, the other, wings.
Sun filtered by thin cirrostratus clouds. The hawk’s shadow is soft as a squirrel’s tail, but it still sets off all the alarms.
Squirrels grapple on a skinny branch 20 feet up. One falls to the ground with a loud plop and races off, sun shining through its tail.
Overcast and cold. Ten feet up the trunk of the big maple, a fox squirrel drinks sap from a slit the woodpeckers have widened.
A squirrel bounds over the snow with a newly disinterred walnut in its teeth. Behind it in the yard, a neat hole ringed with pieces of husk.
My meditative sit is spoiled by the incessant scolding of a squirrel, set off by a feral tabby. Now I know why Nanzen killed the cat.
Cold and clear at sunrise. Two ravens following the ridge croak in unison, their wings almost touching. A squirrel descends the springhouse.
Fog. A distant chainsaw in one direction and in the other, rodent teeth. Amorous squirrels race back and forth over the white ground.
Clear at sunrise, and just two degrees below freezing. A squirrel in the treetops touches its snout to the light’s leading edge.
The close sweep of a woodpecker’s wings sets off a squirrel, who scolds for ten minutes until a male cardinal appears, red as a stop sign.
In the steady rain, a squirrel grabs an unburied black walnut from under the walnut-stained slush and carries it back up the tree.
A couple degrees above freezing. The snowpack has softened, and the squirrels chasing back and forth through the laurel hardly make a sound.
A squirrel foraging in the leaves suddenly streaks for the nearest tree, barely escaping the sharp-shinned hawk hurtling through the forest.