Overcast and two degrees above freezing at dawn, the inversion layer bringing traffic noise from the valley to mingle with scattered chirps and the whistles of dove wings.
mourning doves
December 22, 2024
Very cold and still. Over by the springhouse, juncos are making their happy sounds. A mourning dove moans.
December 3, 2024
A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of their wings.
November 11, 2024
A clearing wind at dawn, after some much-needed rain. A mourning dove sits placidly on a swaying branch, facing east.
June 26, 2024
Two hours past sunrise, a scarlet tanager sings unchallenged from a tree in the yard. The sunlight fades in and out. A mourning dove calls in the distance.
March 25, 2024
Another clear, cold morning. Two mourning doves call back and forth, occasionally overlapping, as the sunlight inches down toward their perches.
March 17, 2024
Patches of blue. The mourning dove’s incessant cooing finally comes to an end, leaving the daffodils’ ensemble of horns to their silence.
February 9, 2024
A mottled sky half an hour past sunrise. It’s quiet. The dove who was calling at first light, as if it were March already, must’ve gone back to sleep.
February 8, 2024
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful.
February 2, 2024
It’s the last overcast dawn for days, they say, so I try to find something to savor in the cold gloom, among the rumbles of distant machines and the one-note whistles of dove wings.
January 6, 2024
Heavy gray clouds, and a breeze from the east: storm coming. Something flushes all the doves from the spring—a euphony of bright notes.
January 2, 2024
An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the wall: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings.
April 16, 2023
Sun glimmering through fog as wild turkeys whine and gobble, mourning doves moan, and a red-winged blackbird sings in the marsh.
March 21, 2023
A cloud-free morning, the sun through the trees just bright enough to fool my body into feeling warm. A mourning dove’s song sounds reassuring: There. There. There.