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.
towhee
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.
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.