The gray supremacy of fog, filtering out the valley’s noise, leaving only the drumming of woodpeckers and the low rumble of a jet high overhead.
pileated woodpecker
A heavy, gray sky that from time to time emits a shimmer of fine precipitation. Woodpeckers’ rhythms turn irregular as they move from their drumming trees to their dining trees. A bit of highway noise for the first time in a week.
A wedge of blue sky opens at sunrise. Four pileated woodpeckers in the hollow take turns drumming, two low, two high. Half an hour later, it’s gray and quiet.
A clear morning at last, the hollow echoing with woodpecker drums. The last few patches of ice are as dull as the eyes of a corpse.
Freezing mist—enough for drip-line percussion from the roof. The waxy chatter of finches up at my mother’s feeders. Down in the hollow, the thunder of a pileated woodpecker.
Well below freezing at sunrise. A pileated woodpecker drums as if it were already courtship season. Two squirrels briefly touch noses, then back away and resume solitary foraging.
A shimmer of rain, which the roof gathers into a smattering of drips. A pileated woodpecker flies over, yelling its head off. A pair of catbirds exchange notes.
Breezy and cool. A pileated woodpecker hops along a log fallen into the meadow, her scarlet crest bobbing among the dames’-rocket.
Warm rain. The hollow echoes with pileated woodpecker drumming and the REEP, REEP calls of great-crested flycatchers. In the yard, an American redstart is singing one of his least forgettable songs.
Rain. The endlessness of red-eyed vireo song. A drumming pileated woodpecker switches to a higher octave.
The sun climbs through blossoming oaks whispery with wind. Pileated woodpeckers exchange volleys of thunder. A downy woodpecker rattles like a beggar with a cup.
Clear and still, despite the madness of clocks losing an hour. Woodpecker drums. A squirrel rummaging through last year’s leaves.
A red dawn. The talking drums of pileated woodpeckers: one bass, one snare. A white-throated sparrow falters half-way through his song.
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree.