A couple of cold nights and the yellow has spread like a contagion through the birches. A squirrel hangs down among the green walnuts.
gray squirrel
Thin fog at sunrise. A pileated woodpecker lands on the side of a tall locust tree and gets bum-rushed by a squirrel.
Thick fog slowly infused with sunlight. A squirrel drops pieces of black walnut shell into the dew-soaked weeds.
Out before sunrise to watch a thunderstorm that never appears. The clouds half-clear. Squirrels go about their business.
Clear and cold. A squirrel joins the sun at the top of a scarlet oak Dad and I planted 25 years ago, now laden with acorns.
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
Sunlight dulled by high haze. A squirrel in the garden grooms its genitals, then pulls a soapwort blossom close for an almost-kiss.
I watch a new squirrel figure out the tree-to-tree route out of the woods, backtracking, sizing things up. The sun goes in.
One gray squirrel shadows another, nose to tail, down the gray driveway. Mid-morning thunder. A patter of rain.
Three squirrels are having a to-do on the porch as if I’m not here, running back and forth under my chair. A deer in the driveway turns her head to watch.
Crystal-clear. Treetops stained with sun. A gray squirrel pours itself into the lilac. The creek’s full-throated chorus.
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.
Cold and gloomy—classic March weather for the equinox. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the treetops, underneath which two squirrels chase, oblivious.
Unseasonably warm and overcast. Up in the woods, squirrels nose through leaf duff newly liberated from the snow. A few drops of rain.