Raininess without much actual raining. The low motor of a hummingbird somewhere in the garden. An aborted black walnut crashes down on the back roof.
rain
Humid and cool, with last night’s rain still dripping from the trees. A lilac limb dead since last summer is greening up with bindweed. The new Carolina wren tries a dozen different variations on his teakettle theme, but so far no female has materialized.
Rain starts at first light. A soggy dawn chorus soon subsides, leaving only the new Carolina wren with his exotic accent and enthusiasm. As the rain thickens, he too falls silent.
A mid-morning downpour. I push my chair back from the sudden curtain of roof-runoff and continue writing to the thrum of it. After half an hour it subsides into drizzle and birdsong. A male towhee flits through the yard, pursued by a pair of begging fledglings.
Light rain. A large bumblebee buzzes past. The phoebe keeps making his sorties from the ring of old fencing around a volunteer red oak seedling, which no doubt appreciates the extra fertilizer.
Rain tapers off by mid-morning, each iris leaf laden with shining encapsulations of the white sky. A small dinosaur known as a great-crested flycatcher calls at the woods’ edge.
A downpour tapers into hard rain and I can hear the birds again. Whatever the cerulean warbler might be asking, he doesn’t seem satisfied with a redstart’s insistent response.
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.
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.