Birds still singing in a downpour: scarlet tanager, common yellowthroat, Acadian flycatcher, great-crested flycatcher… Fronds of bracken tremble as if readying for flight.
great-crested flycatcher
Warm rain. The hollow echoes with pileated woodpecker drumming and the REEP, REEP calls of great-crested flycatchers. In the yard, an American redstart is singing one of his least forgettable songs.
From sun to gloom to sun again in less than an hour. The vireos, ovenbirds, goldfinches and gnatcatchers chatter on regardless, interrupted only by a great crested flycatcher’s stentorian call.
Cold and very blue through the trees, where a great-crested flycatcher is going wheep wheep wheep wheep wheep and the leaves whisper everything they’re told.
Cloudy and cool. I carry an offering of soup bones out to the ravens. A great-crested flycatcher lets loose.
Clear and cool. The sun struggles to infiltrate the forest canopy, where a great-crested flycatcher is whinnying. Gnatcatchers forage on the undersides of leaves.
Is it clear or clouded over? A gibbous moon turning pink above the ridge provides the answer. The great-crested flycatcher wakes up.
Waiting for rain, everything sounds like an augury—catbird, chipmunk, great-crested flycatcher—and just before the first drops, that hush.
Goldfinches, scarlet tanager, great-crested flycatcher, catbird, towhee… no composer, no conductor. All music needs is a listener.
Overcast, with the smell of ozone, damp soil and lilacs. A perfect day for the great-crested flycatcher to return, I think, and there he is.
Cloudy and cool. The great-crested flycatchers are back with their dinosaur calls. From down-hollow, the faint carillon of a wood thrush.
A great-crested flycatcher responds to a red-bellied woodpecker’s trill. A squirrel missing half its tail fixes me with a hostile stare.
Two great-crested flycatchers foraging in the rain target insects sheltering under leaves. The only dry thing is a cerulean warbler’s song.
Two phoebes hawk insects by the springhouse, while Acadian and great-crested flycatchers call from the woods. It’s a bad day to be a fly.