Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
towhee
Clear and very quiet at dawn. Some scattered towhee tweets. The thump of a walnut dropped by a half-awake squirrel.
Sunrise brings birdsong: a Tennesee warbler’s blur of high notes answered by a towhee’s interrogatory tweet, and a white-throated sparrow’s “Oh, sweet Canada” giving way to the reedy whistles of cedar waxwings, tut-tutting robins, and a winter wren’s liquid braid.
Clear and cool. A towhee calls in the distance. Yesterday’s last yellow flower atop the tall mullein stalk has gone out; nothing there now but the sun.
White sun in a white sky crossed by crows. Twittering goldfinches have the mid-morning chorus mostly to themselves, aside from one dogged towhee.
Overcast and cool. Up on the ridge, a Cooper’s hawk calls once—a workman’s sudden, colorful string of curses—and falls silent. A towhee comes out into the meadow to sing.
Everything wet and shining as the clouds move out. A towhee flies up to a low limb and rubs the caterpillar in his bill against the bark to remove its bristles.
Two towhees tweet as I drink my tea. Finally they meet at the woods’ edge, tails flared, and one flees. Blue holes appear in the clouds.
Hard rain slackening after sunrise. As the drumming on the roofs subsides, I can hear a torrent of Carolina wren song and towhee calls.
Cold, windy, and overcast. The ring of daffodils in my yard offers a bright yellow rebuke to the grayness. Drink your tea! says the towhee. I’m trying.
Daffodils are open under a gray-wool sky. A cowbird’s liquid note. Up by the garage, a towhee is calling.
A slightly flat full moon in the west at dawn. A towhee calls from the dark edge of the woods. Freight trains labor up the valley. Just before full daylight, a screech owl begins to trill.
Breezy and cool at dawn. Migrants trade notes as they explore the forest edge: towhee, phoebe, thrush. A lost passenger jet comes roaring overhead.
Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush.