Out early to catch the coolness, such as it is. Sunlight filtered by atmospheric murk. A breeze riffling the walnut leaves. Ovenbirds, towhees and red-eyed vireos once again making their small claims.
towhee
A mid-morning downpour. I push my chair back from the sudden curtain of roof-runoff and continue writing to the thrum of it. After half an hour it subsides into drizzle and birdsong. A male towhee flits through the yard, pursued by a pair of begging fledglings.
Having slept through a dawn storm, I wake to find the power out. A towhee yells at me from a branch of the closest walnut—one song I can hear above the dull roar of the generator up at my mother’s house.
Foggy and damp. A catbird sings a few bars and falls silent. An hour later, a Baltimore oriole does the same. The field sparrows and towhees keep up their monotonous commentary.
Quiet and cool at mid-morning. A cloud appears in the east only to disintegrate. Towhees call from several directions as I finish my tea.
An April shower turns into a downpour just as I come out onto the porch. I look up from my book sometime later and realize that it’s stopped. The sky brightens. A towhee and a song sparrow trade riffs.
Overcast with an orange sunrise glow. Jays, the cardinal, a towhee. A winter wren burbles quietly beside the springhouse.
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.