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.
tufted titmouse
5/5/2024
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.
3/16/2024
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.
3/12/2024
The sun climbs through bare trees while I’m not looking, lost in blue like the titmouse with his endless diatribe.
10/15/2023
Overcast but brightening. Snow birds are moving through the half-bare lilac, exchanging notes. Titmice and chickadees forage in the thinning birches.
1/29/2023
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.
1/17/2023
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.
10/4/2022
How can it be so yellow out and yet so cold? But the winter birds sound happy: chickadees, nuthatches, a red-bellied woodpecker.
3/24/2022
Under a uniformly gray sky the same titmouse has been singing the same monotonous notes, I realize, for the past 45 minutes.
3/22/2022
Weak sun through thickening clouds. A robin and his echo. The metallic taps of a titmouse opening a sunflower seed against a drainpipe.
3/10/2022
Yesterday’s snow glitters between the shadows of trees. To the winter-long harangues of cardinal, titmouse and Carolina wren, add one phoebe.
3/5/2022
A leaden sky at sunrise, but an hour later, the sun glimmers through thinning clouds. Cardinal and titmouse song. The smell of bare dirt.
2/9/2022
Another clear, cold sunrise urged on by nuthatches and titmice. As the western ridge turns red, a pileated woodpecker chimes in.
6/11/2021
Overcast and cool. A titmouse appears to have developed a taste for caterpillars, circling the trunk of a walnut like a nuthatch.