Light rain. The towhee who usually taps on the windows appears in the garden with a long yellow caterpillar dangling from his bill.
rain
Misty rain. After drinking from the feeder, a hummingbird sips water from the ant guard as if to cleanse her palate.
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.
Sun one minute, rain the next. The plastic flamingo bobbing in the wind keeps her eye on the weeds: cleavers, soapwort, cypress spurge.
Cold rain getting harder. The Carolina wren’s “tea kettle” call never seemed more appropriate. The catbird lisps and buzzes like a warbler.
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.
Above the sound of rain, buzzy calls of warblers. The young turkey who’s been hanging around wanders out of the woods, looking bedraggled.
Cold rain. A big carpenter bee flies in, circles the porch, and disappears under the house.
Mizzle. A squirrel emerges from under the porch, spots me, and rears up with one front paw tucked into its chest hair like rodent Napoleon.
Did it really rain hard last night, or did I dream that? The creek seems no louder. High against the clouds, a small hawk flaps and circles.
Intermittent showers after a night of storms. A dead oak leaf stands upright among the daffodils like someone at the wrong party.
Curtains of rain blow this way and that. The crack of branch. Bits of gray paper come flying loose from the old hornets’ nest under the eaves.
The almost Kabbalistic way a few syllables of thunder have birthed a whole lexicon of torrent. Fog takes a heavy eraser to the trees.
Rain mingled with the ticking of sleet. The early daffodils cluster together, heads nodding, like youths defying a social-distancing order.