Cold and mostly clear. Barely audible above the red-eyed vireos and scarlet tanager, the minor-key call of a titmouse—that wintry sound.
tufted titmouse
Clear and cool at sunrise. A feral cat slinks through the coverts at the woods’ edge, pursued by a small, mostly silent entourage of chickadees and titmice.
A few degrees above freezing at sunrise. A titmouse’s monotonous song. The clouds turn orange and drift off like boats into the blue.
Two fresh inches of mostly sleet, with its bleak magic of turning from sand to concrete. A titmouse by the springhouse sings his most mechanical song. A distant crow.
Rain and fog shut out all sounds from the valley; a gobbling turkey and a pair of pileated woodpeckers are the loudest things. A titmouse sheltering in the lilac shakes the rain from his wings.
Gloomy sunrise, with a cloud snagged on the treetops, leaking rain. A titmouse takes advantage of a lull in the chorus to hype his own claim. A tanager’s plucked string.
The sun finally clears the one, thin cloud above the horizon only to disappear into a thicket. The robin has taken a break, so the titmouse holds forth.
The sun climbs through bare trees while I’m not looking, lost in blue like the titmouse with his endless diatribe.
Overcast but brightening. Snow birds are moving through the half-bare lilac, exchanging notes. Titmice and chickadees forage in the thinning birches.
Dull mid-morning light—the threadbare snowpack is brighter than the clouds. A titmouse sounds the predator alarm and a squirrel cleaning off a walnut climbs a few feet higher into the lilac.
Cold rain. The last scrap of December’s snow in the yard has shrunk to the size of a handkerchief. A back-and-forth between a titmouse and a chickadee.
How can it be so yellow out and yet so cold? But the winter birds sound happy: chickadees, nuthatches, a red-bellied woodpecker.
Under a uniformly gray sky the same titmouse has been singing the same monotonous notes, I realize, for the past 45 minutes.
Weak sun through thickening clouds. A robin and his echo. The metallic taps of a titmouse opening a sunflower seed against a drainpipe.