A gloomy morning punctuated by brief showers. I look up at one point to spot a male hummingbird rocketing back and forth above the creek, performing for a female perched in a black elderberry bush that has just leafed out.
rain
Steady rain since before daybreak: the dawn chorus gains a rhythmless drumbeat. A red squirrel tries to run past my feet and loses its nerve in a panicked scrabbling of claws.
A pause between showers fills with birdsong—the red-eyed vireo AKA preacher bird is back. Then a brown thrasher joins the chat.
Breezy and cold, which the sun rising through clouds and half-leafed-out trees does little to abate. But when it emerges fully, I blink into a glisten of raindrops from last night’s showers winking back.
A flaming pink sky subsides into orange, then gray. A scattering of raindrops. A red squirrel follows a chipping sparrow’s rattle with one of its own.
Overcast and cold and sunrise, with drips and drops that slowly coalesce into rain. My nostrils flare: the thirsty earth is already releasing petrichor. The field sparrows sing on.
Cool and still damp from rain in the small hours. The sun goes back in after just fifteen minutes. The house finch stops caroling as the wind picks up.
A freakishly warm breeze lightly seasoned with rain. The sun appears and disappears at random. A Louisiana waterthrush calls from the first bend in the creek below the spring.
A rainy Easter morning. At 6:31 a.m., in the half-light of dawn, a brown thrasher announces his return from the tropics with a minute-long improvisation atop the springhouse roof.
An April shower turns into a downpour just as I come out onto the porch. I look up from my book sometime later and realize that it’s stopped. The sky brightens. A towhee and a song sparrow trade riffs.
Damp, overcast and cool. The pussy willow I planted two years ago is in its glory, gray catkins cottony with droplets of water. A small cloud forms in the meadow behind the barn and drifts up toward the ridge.
Warm and damp. A rain shower passes through while I scroll the headlines. A tufted titmouse turns up the volume on his spring song.
We may have lost an hour from our phones, but at least the nukes haven’t started flying yet. The half moon sets. A few drops of rain darken the sidewalk. I am regarded gravely by a red squirrel.
Rain at one degree above freezing. How sweet it must taste to the daffodil bulbs awakening in the thawed garden and the wild onions stirring at the meadow’s edge.