Tent caterpillar webs billow, white as sails—still full of the dawn fog. Two nuthatches kvetch back and forth at the woods’ edge.
white-breasted nuthatch
May 20, 2012
Six nuthatches—parents and fledglings—scour the trees from top to bottom, soft calls communicating who knows what instructive tidbits.
April 6, 2012
Clear and cold at sunrise. A nuthatch on the dark side of the tall tulip poplar reverses course and ascends into the sunlit crown.
February 11, 2012
Snow in progress: curtains that fall and fall until they become the show itself. A nuthatch like a prompter—its anxious calls.
January 30, 2012
Where the fresh snow has just melted on the concrete walkway, a bright green blush of lichen. The nuthatch’s three nasal notes.
December 13, 2011
Sun through a skim of clouds. A nuthatch and a downy woodpecker trade anxious, nasal notes between the faint shadows of the trees.
December 8, 2011
Sunny and cold. A nuthatch lands on the dead cherry and begins a close inspection of the limbs, dapper as an accountant in his gray suit.
December 1, 2011
Chickadee and nuthatch alarms are ringing over something in the tall weeds. A squirrel pauses beside the porch to scratch its ear.
September 21, 2011
A low cloud ceiling imposes gloom and silence, save for the closest chirps. A nuthatch, normally querulous, sounds downright neurotic.
March 15, 2011
Sun glimmers through thin clouds, the ground is hazy with frost, and me trying to blink the sleep from my eyes. A nuthatch’s anxious call.
January 5, 2011
Flakes in the air and the barest fur on the ground, like a leaf’s glaucous bloom. A low-key chattering match of nuthatches 100 yards apart.
November 21, 2010
A quiet Sunday morning, frost like a pall, and a pair of nuthatches in querulous dialogue about—who knows?—the taste of frozen bugs.
October 25, 2010
Just past daybreak, a pileated woodpecker whinnies, a nuthatch tuts, a crow croaks, and a gray squirrel clatters through gray branches.
September 23, 2010
Thick fog at daybreak, as if the bright moon of 2am had spread a kind of mildew over the mountain. Train whistle. A nuthatch’s nasal call.