A few blue fissures in the clouds. A tree sparrow explores the ridges and valleys of the corrugated steel roof over the oil tanks.
tree sparrow
6/28/2020
The towhee interrupts his window-tapping to attend to fledglings in the tall grass. Tree sparrows in the garden trill as they mate.
2/27/2020
The ground is white again, and the shape of the wind sketched out by flying flakes. A tree sparrow sings, homesick perhaps for the tundra.
11/21/2016
High winds. The chairs huddle together at the end of the porch. Oak trees rattle; the pines roar. A sparrow flies into the wind, chittering.
11/2/2015
A light smear of sun in the Monday gray. Birds stir in the tall cedar beside the house: the chip chip of a junco; a tree sparrow’s tseet.
2/16/2014
The only spots of bare earth are in the plowed driveway. When I stand up, they erupt in wings, seeding the snowy yard with brown sparrows.
3/29/2013
Overcast and cold. An agitation of nuthatches at the edge of the woods, and somewhere beyond, the thin, high whistle of a tree sparrow.
1/18/2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.
2/6/2011
There must be open water in the ditch: jay- and sparrow-shaped silhouettes are going up and down the dogwood’s laddered branches.
1/17/2011
A titmouse lands in the cherry, the streak in his breast the same rust as a tree sparrow’s cap, a broomsedge stem, these icicles at sunrise.