Overcast and cold. A chickadee foraging at the woods’ edge sings his fee-bee song. A sudden scrabbling of squirrel claws on locust bark.
gray squirrel
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.
December 1, 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.
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!
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.
June 27, 2021
Perhaps just a bit fewer mosquitoes this morning. The double knock of a stone shifting under a squirrel’s weight.
June 2, 2021
Four goldfinches take an intense discussion all around the yard. Two squirrels travel together much more slowly—must be mating season again.
March 27, 2021
Sun climbing every tree at once. A hollow snag mutters like a stomach with its cargo of squirrels.
March 25, 2021
Overcast and damp, with woodpecker rattle and squirrel-claw clatter and an exuberant robin duetting with his echo.
February 27, 2021
Both ridges vanish into fog. A squirrel missing the end of its tail disinters a black walnut from the frozen earth.
February 26, 2021
A red-tailed hawk dives at a squirrel just as I come out. Then woodwinds: a V of geese followed by tundra swans. The first killdeer’s cry.
February 21, 2021
Bone-achingly cold. A squirrel navigating the tulip tree walks on the undersides of snowy limbs. Sunrise stains the western ridge blood-red.
February 14, 2021
Tentative footsteps at the edge of the porch, first from a gray squirrel, then a Carolina wren, each obviously annoyed by my presence.
February 7, 2021
Fine snow begins to fall. A squirrel is leaping through the treetops as if on some other white powder. Wakening nuthatches compare notes.