Crystal-clear. A Cooper’s hawk calls from the top of the tallest tree in the yard as sunrise reddens the western ridge.
sunrise
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.
The slow creak of a field cricket like a rusty winch for the sunrise. In the dying lilac I spot new mile-a-minute vines.
Rain starts at sunrise and tapers off a half hour later. In its wake: phoebe, pewee, goldfinch, Carolina wren. A cedar waxwing’s whistle.
An autumnal sunrise heralded by crickets. I search the bracken patch for any two fronds in the same shade of green, yellow, or brown.
Half a moon alone in the sky. A silent catbird flies into the half-dead lilac. Off through the forest, blinding fragments of the sun.
A dawn chorus of tree crickets, field crickets and mole crickets. After a half-clear sunrise, the clouds move in.
Sunrise reddens the western ridge as the flat-tire moon fades, alone in the sky. Jewelweed flowers along the stream nod and sway as the first hummingbird makes her rounds.
Crystal-clear and still at sunrise. Dew drips from the roof. Over by the springhouse, a red squirrel and a Carolina wren are having a free and frank exchange of views.
Thin, high clouds. The yellow smudge that is the sun rises to the tune of quarry trucks beeping backwards. I study the weeds where I saw a bear disappear ten hours earlier, just at dusk.
Clear and still at sunrise, with a sheen of dew on the meadow. A screech owl trills in the distance, nearly drowned out by goldfinches.