Partly clear and windy at sunrise. A sharp-shinned hawk comes in low over the houses, immediately attracts the attention of crows, and flees back north with three in hot pursuit.
sunrise
A raven with something red in its beak. Three running deer causing a fourth to raise and lower her tail. Patches of gold appear among the clouds.
Cold and mostly clear. An occasional sound of trains or traffic rises above the shush of wind. A single red cloud scuds overhead and disappears off east.
Sunrise delayed for a few minutes by a low bank of clouds. A gray squirrel emerges from its nest high in a black cherry and dashes down the newly exposed trunk. A robin adds a few tut-tuts to the chorus of white-throated sparrows.
Clear and cold. The sun pops up—the pea in our daylight-savings shell game. A screech owl begins to trill.
Red sky behind red leaves at sunrise. In the yard, big winds have stripped the tulip tree of all but its smallest leaves—the sheerest of dresses.
Wind breaking up the yellow-bellied clouds. Tulip tree samaras spin like the blades of invisible helicopters—a whole squadron headed out into the meadow.
Steady rain from heavy clouds, with the seeming glow of orange and yellow leaves in lieu of a sunrise. A drenched gray squirrel beside the porch peers up at the sky.
Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
Crystal-clear. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the top of the tallest tree in the yard as sunrise reddens the western ridge.
Mist dissipating into blue. The walnut trees on the north side of the house are now nearly bare, even as the one on the south side is still more green than yellow. The sun briefly blazes through a new hole in the hillside canopy.
Canada geese, a screech owl, some crows, and the inevitable wren sing in the sunrise, the western ridge turning red under a flat-tire moon.
Another cold sunrise. A distant Carolina wren song prompts the wren roosting atop my heating oil tank to come flying out singing and land in the bracken.
Cold, clear, and still at sunrise, with little sign of the more than two million birds who streamed overhead during the moonlit hours aside from a few soft, scattered chirps.