A racket of jays in the crown of an oak, calling and making excited rattling sounds in their throats, as if cheering on the ripening acorns.
oaks
A squirrel descends an oak at high speed while rolicking robin music plays in the background. Closeup on the maple buds round as stoplights.
An urgent, nasal call: the Cooper’s hawks are back. The female glides into a tall pine while the male appears and disappears among the oaks.
In the still air, a small disk of ash falls spinning like a demonic snowflake. The sun smolders on the ridgetop between columns of oaks.
An impossible butterfly dances past the porch: a shred of oak leaf. The trees creak and groan in the bitter-cold wind.
Cold, and an iron wind. Two murders of crows rage at each other from the crowns of adjacent oaks, the sunrise slippery on their napes.
Bright and cold. A blue jay practices its red-tailed hawk scream at the top of a scarlet oak, half the leaves still there and gleaming.
The doe’s gray coat blends into the November woods, her two grown fawns still brown. They nuzzle through the leaf duff, feasting on acorns.
The wind rustles in the crown of one red oak; all the others are still. A train whistle. The light patches in the clouds fade to blue.
The yard is alive with robins foraging, chasing, tut-tutting, rust-orange breasts the color of the oaks, all aglow in the mid-morning sun.
Clear and windy. Twelve crows fly sideways in tight formation over the treetops, the still-green oak leaves gilded by the sun.
A steady clatter of acorns from a squirrel foraging in the crown of an oak. Could it be dropping them on purpose for later retrieval?
Windy at sunrise, and the thermometer’s arrow just past 32. I scan the low spots for frost, thinking about the oaks’ Rapunzel blooms.
Thick ground fog, one degree below freezing. The trees grow sharper as the sun begins to blur. Please don’t flower yet, I tell the oaks.