Treetops rusty with sun. Worm-eating warbler—or is it a chipping sparrow? That dry rattle. A pair of mating craneflies goes unsteadily past.
sunrise
Sun through thinning fog—prismatic beads of water twinkling from every twig like the souls of dead leaves. It feels almost masochistic to turn my eyes to my book.
Clear and cold. Sunlight fills the tall tulip tree, which is shaped like martini glass, from the top down. A woodpecker duets with his echo.
Clear at sunrise but with enough high-altitude murk to turn the western ridge red. A lone goose flies over, honking.
A hint of yellow in the east soon fades to gloom. It’s one degree above freezing. Tiny silhouettes in the crown of a black birch—kinglets?
Crystal-clear. Treetops stained with sun. A gray squirrel pours itself into the lilac. The creek’s full-throated chorus.
Dark and rainy at sunrise; ridgetop lost in fog. Down in the boggy corner of the meadow, one spring peeper is still calling.
Bare branches mellowing the sun’s blaze. Two crows fly into the woods and one flies out. There are eight million stories in the naked forest.
Still bitter cold, but the wind has died. Clouds redden. A phoebe snags breakfast from the bark of a tree like a nuthatch.
Bitter cold at sunrise. The usual singers are subdued, except for one dove. The occasional bang of heartwood split by ice.
Deep blue sky; two degrees above freezing. As the sun climbs out of the trees, the morning chorus dies down until it’s only the Carolina wren.
Sunrise reddens the western ridge and its whine of traffic. Cardinal song. With my last sip of tea, the sun strikes my face.
Clear everywhere except where the sun rises pink, orange and yellow, heralded by small woodpeckers with loud, locust-wood drums.
A leaden sky at sunrise, but an hour later, the sun glimmers through thinning clouds. Cardinal and titmouse song. The smell of bare dirt.