Cold and gray. A commotion of wings by the springhouse where breakfast eludes a Cooper’s hawk. He sits in the crabapple ruffling his feathers.
springhouse
Full moon gone in, I feel snowflakes on my face, their almost clinical touch. The sound of a train. The springhouse roof turning white.
A Carolina wren heralds the dawn from atop the springhouse roof, his mate counter-singing—as ornithologists call her answering Shhhhhh!
The rain stops but the trees go on dripping. The sky brightens. Through newly bare spicebush branches, I can see the springhouse once again.
In thin fog, the soft notes of juncos and white-throated sparrows taking their morning baths in the shelter of a dogwood beside the springhouse.
Snow is gone from the north side of the springhouse roof; the stream has a whole new range of notes. Up by the barn, a phoebe is calling.
Cloud cover riddled with blue holes, though the sun remains hidden. From beside the springhouse, a higher-pitched, thinner chickadee call.
The tulip tree next to the springhouse is nearly bare, its last few leaves waving like four-fingered cartoon hands as the sky darkens to rain.
Soft sun. Birds flit through the weeds beside the springhouse. A white-throated sparrow sings just the first, wavery note of his song.
Rain and fog. Gray-green lichen glows on tree trunks in the woods and on every twisted branch of the old crabapple beside the springhouse.
It’s above freezing; birds bathe in the spring. A snowbird hops through the only patch of snow: on the north side of the springhouse roof.
A few snowflakes wander to and fro in the wind. From the flooded patch of ground next to the springhouse, the scattered chirps of birds.
Where the stream fans out beside the springhouse, birds hop down the snowbanks and into the water to bathe: sparrows, juncos, Carolina wren.
A blue jay flies across the sun, wings momentarily turning white. I see that the Virginia creeper on the springhouse roof has gone rust-red.