Gray sky ten minutes after a flaming sunrise. A phoebe calls for old times’ sake. Quarry trucks rumble through the gap.
phoebe
August 24, 2023
Overcast and cool. A phoebe calls a few times from beyond the spring house and falls silent. As if in mockery, a pewee’s slower, more lilting response.
August 9, 2023
Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
April 12, 2023
Two phoebes in a singing contest at dawn. A warm breeze. The half-moon settles in a tall pine.
March 23, 2023
Fog and scattered showers. The last few woodcock peents overlap with phoebes—two of them already, trying to out-sing each other.
March 19, 2023
A dozen dead leaves circle the yard as the clouds’ bellies turn orange. A phoebe calls once, sotto voce, from a branch above the creek.
March 17, 2023
In the half-light of dawn, something approaches, rustling in the dry leaves: rain. A few minutes later, the first phoebe begins his time-worn chant.
October 16, 2022
Colors so much warmer than the air. Halfway through the morning, the sky clears. Sun in the treetops. A phoebe calls.
May 23, 2022
Half awake at half-light. The dawn chorus starts promptly at 5:00 with field sparrow and towhee, then song sparrow, phoebe, robin. Train horn.
April 16, 2022
Rainy, breezy and intermittently bright. The zigzag flight of a phoebe finding breakfast above the daffodils.
April 12, 2022
Warm rain. Phoebe and robin drown out the night chant of peepers. All the daffodils’ cups have turned bottoms-up.
April 5, 2022
Sunnier than promised at mid morning. The singers have slowed—wren, phoebe, field sparrow—as if in dialogue with silence.
March 29, 2022
Still bitter cold, but the wind has died. Clouds redden. A phoebe snags breakfast from the bark of a tree like a nuthatch.
March 18, 2022
Sun climbing through the trees into a cloudless sky. A second male phoebe has joined the first, which means three times more phoebeing.