Rain and fog. A wood thrush sings three times and falls silent. A mourning dove goes on and on.
mourning doves
Bitter cold at sunrise. The usual singers are subdued, except for one dove. The occasional bang of heartwood split by ice.
Clouds going from pink to orange to yellow as the sky turns paler blue, all to the sound of running water and the whistling of doves’ wings.
A vast Sunday-morning silence broken only by mourning dove wings, the soft taps of a downy woodpecker, and the grumbling of my stomach.
Fourth-quarter moon just above the trees. The dawn chorus begins with a mourning dove. Then Carolina wren, crows, a red-winged blackbird.
The Cooper’s hawk lands in the yard and the doves scatter—a cacophony of flutes. He flies off east where the icy snow is a blaze of white.
Five doves sit motionless in the crabapple. The drumming of a pileated woodpecker seemingly in response to metallic banging from the quarry.
Scattered honks from an unseen traffic of geese above the clouds. It’s warm. The mourning doves are finishing each other’s sentences.
Under a low, dark cloud ceiling, the echoing call and response of two mourning doves. A quiet gurgle from the stream. Not a breath of wind.
Heavy clouds, but only a few drops fall. A mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker go over and over their opposing points of view.
Dull light through a heavy cloud ceiling. A red-bellied woodpecker and mourning dove take turns calling, first dirge, then ululation.
Low sun on snow—even the shadows glitter. I’m feeling creaky, like the labored wingbeats of a dove starting up from the water.
Had I not risen early I would’ve missed the sun, the rooster, two doves’ calls blending into something like the distant locomotive’s chord.
The drone of a single-prop plane, hidden like the horizon by trees. A mourning dove calls. The sun slowly submerges in a mud bath of clouds.