Rainy and cold. The distant firing of a semi-automatic rifle, muffled by valley fog, sounds like nothing so much as a crepitating fart.
rain
October 16, 2020
Rainy and cold. White-throated sparrows call in different keys, each more plaintive than the last. The birches are fluttery with kinglets.
October 13, 2020
Mizzle: the wet feet of a cloud that slowly settles over the glowing trees, the lone, anxious jay, the clarinet voices of wild geese.
October 12, 2020
Rain. A red-eyed vireo is calling. My brother the birder tells me that at daybreak there were seven species of sparrows on the garden fence.
October 4, 2020
A shimmer of moisture in the air, interrupted here and there by an actual raindrop. The roof drips. It’s cold. The lurid colors appall.
September 29, 2020
Hard rain. My brain feels sluggish, despite coffee. A flash of lightning like the apotheosis of all this yellow.
June 18, 2020
Light rain. The towhee who usually taps on the windows appears in the garden with a long yellow caterpillar dangling from his bill.
May 28, 2020
Misty rain. After drinking from the feeder, a hummingbird sips water from the ant guard as if to cleanse her palate.
May 22, 2020
Sky darkening to rain. I realize that the bare soil I’d taken for the spoil heap from some animal’s burrow is in fact a growing ant mound.
May 11, 2020
Sun one minute, rain the next. The plastic flamingo bobbing in the wind keeps her eye on the weeds: cleavers, soapwort, cypress spurge.
May 8, 2020
Cold rain getting harder. The Carolina wren’s “tea kettle” call never seemed more appropriate. The catbird lisps and buzzes like a warbler.
May 6, 2020
Rain. A gray catbird on the gray road pecking at things that are not gray. In the trees above, a blue-headed vireo sings possession.
April 30, 2020
Above the sound of rain, buzzy calls of warblers. The young turkey who’s been hanging around wanders out of the woods, looking bedraggled.
April 26, 2020
Cold rain. A big carpenter bee flies in, circles the porch, and disappears under the house.