Leaves glistening with last night’s rain. A distant raven. The puttering of a hummingbird’s small motor.
raven
8/9/2023
Clear and cool at sunrise. A phoebe’s bill snaps on a slow cranefly. From high overhead, the tolling of a bell soon turns into raven croaks.
6/20/2023
Cloudy and cool. I carry an offering of soup bones out to the ravens. A great-crested flycatcher lets loose.
4/25/2023
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
3/2/2023
The mid-morning sun in the forecast comes with a scrim of cloud, a breeze, and a raven on the ridgetop going bonk…bonk…bonk…
1/11/2023
Still air and a heavy frost. A pair of ravens fly side by side over the porch, one calling like a crow—falsetto—the other like a death rattle.
12/31/2022
A mottled white sky with crows to the north and ravens croaking off to the south. The snowpack is soft and granular, absorbing sound.
12/2/2022
The frosted meadow glitters in the sun. A scrabbling of squirrel claws on bark. Off to the south, a raven croaks; to the north, crows.
11/24/2022
The sun finally clears the ridgetop at 8:00. A crow at the compost has an exchange with a raven high overhead: caw caw caw ARK ARK ARK etc.
9/13/2022
Deep blue sky with last night’s rain still glistening in the understory. In the sun-drenched canopy, four crows sit yelling at a raven.
8/29/2022
Dawn sky striped with red. A small cloud forms in the hollow. The sleepy croaks of a raven: urk, argh. Then the wren and it’s day.
7/23/2022
Every time I look up from my book, more sunlight has infiltrated the forest like bright rungs of a ladder. A raven clears its throat.
2/1/2022
With crows about, a raven skulks through the pines, talking with its mate in sotto voce rattles. They fly over the porch with labored wingbeats.
1/27/2022
Zero degrees. Sun through bare branches—a shining fur of hoarfrost. Two ravens fly in low and circle my mother’s house.