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.
killdeer
Friday March 29, 2019
Warmish and rainy. From the valley to the east: a great blue heron with its sword-blade wings, its spring-loaded neck. A killdeer’s call.
Saturday May 05, 2018
Black-throated green warbler. I fetch my chair from the creek where the storm blew it. High over the neighboring valley, a killdeer’s cry.
Tuesday February 21, 2017
Weak sunlight. Dead leaves are all a-rustle, rummaged through by squirrels, voles, chipmunks, juncos. The distant cry of a maybe killdeer.
Wednesday March 16, 2016
Overcast and damp. The distant calls of a killdeer, returning from migration and spying the valley’s alluringly barren fields.
Tuesday March 15, 2016
At first light, off in the fog, the weird, nasal calls of timberdoodles. One launches into the air with a whistling of wings.
Monday March 14, 2016
Sound is out of the east: quarry trucks and grinders. In the gray woods, gray squirrels glide silently over the rain-slicked leaf duff.
Sunday March 13, 2016
Rain. In the marshy corner of the field, the duck-like calls of wood frogs, just up from their cryogenic sleep and already fully aroused.
Saturday March 12, 2016
Bright sun. From the valley, four gunshots in quick succession, followed by silence. A phoebe circles the house singing, as if sizing me up.
Friday March 11, 2016
Sunrise tints the clouds orange. I squint through eyelids made bleary with pink-eye and lack of sleep. A downy woodpecker’s soft rattle.