Sunlight alternates with wind-blown precipitation half-way between snow and rain. The chirps of a downy woodpecker working a tall locust.
rain
Steady rain. Two drenched birders walk up the road, towels draped over their binoculars, and tell me they’d managed to flush a barred owl.
Fog gives back to the forest those soft edges and sense of distance that were lost when the leaves came down. Rain taps on the roof. A crow.
After rain in the night, a clearing wind at sunrise. The woods is now more brown than white. A chipmunk zips across a patch of snow.
Drizzle on snow—a phrase that, moved to the kitchen, sounds almost enticing. Christmas has come early for a crow excited about the compost.
Steady rain; the frost in the windows has turned to fog. Juncos move through the weeds like a human crowd, a mix of the bold and the timid.
I have to wipe the fog off my chair before I can sit. After a while, it begins to rain. In the dead meadow weeds, a commentary of sparrows.
The freezing rain stops by mid-morning, but the low cloud cover persists. From the valley to the east, the sound of semi-automatic gunfire.
Overcast and breezy. The blue-gray back of a small hawk—sharp-shinned or Cooper’s—darting through the yard. A few raindrops tap on the roof.
Rain past, the sky brightens. Great crowds of oak leaves are taking the plunge. A freight train whistles an almost perfect minor chord.
So that mackerel sky at midnight meant rain by dawn. But already the clouds are breaking up and slicks of sun are pooling between the trees.
Rainy and dark, with a steady, fluttering fall of leaves. A freight train rumbling up the valley is the only thing audible over the rain.
It’s pouring. Lichens glow on rain-dark trees, pale blue and green rashes. Through a thickening carpet of fallen leaves, the bright moss.
Mist turns into drizzle. A small, filmy-winged fly drifts back and forth across the yard, heedless as a texting teen. A goldfinch monologue.