Heavy clouds, but only a few drops fall. A mourning dove and a red-bellied woodpecker go over and over their opposing points of view.
rain
A green haze of invasives: daylily, barberry, garlic mustard. A gnatcatcher hovering and diving between raindrops—the tick tick of its bill.
Amid the heavy raindrops, the lighter ghosts of just-melted snowflakes. Treetops sway this way and that. The towhee goes on calling.
Rain seasoned with sleet. The trapped balloons hang limply from their dead tree, wrinkled like over-ripe fruit.
The banks of moss above the road shine bright after last night’s rain. Two chickadees sing their spring songs as snowflakes fill the air.
Late morning and the rain stops, the fog lifts to reveal the same snow-clad mountain as before. The distant sound of an engine being revved.
Last night’s torrential rain has given way to wind, sunlight shimmering on the flooded stream and the waxy leaves of mountain laurel.
Cold rain; the snowpack is in tatters now. At the top of a locust snag, a gray squirrel’s tail waves and twitches like a mad flag.
Yesterday it was below freezing and rained; now it’s above freezing and snow is coming down: dilettantish at first, then in a mad dance.
A high-pitched train horn. The yammering of a red-bellied woodpecker. Almost imperceptibly, rain begins to tap on the snowpack’s icy lid.
Last night’s ice has melted, but the rain continues. A song sparrow sits in the barberry bush, gorging, emitting a chirp after each berry.
Staccato sounds: the distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker, a white-breasted nuthatch’s agitated call, rain tapping on the roof. Again.
It rained so hard last night, I dreamed the mountain had turned into a lake. Now it’s merely drizzling. Small birds forage in the treetops.
It’s our local Christmas Bird Count, so every drip of cold rain or moving shape off in the fog might be a bird. But none are.