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.
white-breasted nuthatch
A quiet Sunday morning, frost like a pall, and a pair of nuthatches in querulous dialogue about—who knows?—the taste of frozen bugs.
Just past daybreak, a pileated woodpecker whinnies, a nuthatch tuts, a crow croaks, and a gray squirrel clatters through gray branches.
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.
A succession of anxious or querulous calls—nuthatch, crow, Cooper’s hawk, pileated woodpecker—until sunrise reddens the western ridge.
Highway noise from over the ridge; a whiff of diesel. A downy woodpecker going up the dead elm passes a nuthatch going down.
Fresh buds have appeared on one of the two wild grape sprigs I planted at the base of the dead cherry. A nuthatch calls in the growing heat.
At 8:02 a patter of rain too brief to even darken the sidewalk. Nuthatch, field sparrow. A crow bleats like a lamb with a hand on its neck.
The overcast sky looks the same, but the light turns from glow to dull in just 15 minutes. I watch a brown creeper but hear only nuthatches.
Quiet at mid-morning except for the yank, yank of a nuthatch and the creaking of trees in what feels like it could become a clearing wind.
The wind was busy while I slept. Is this the same snow I swept off the porch yesterday? A nuthatch probes the cherry with its clinical bill.
The hush of snow against leaves like soft brushes playing on the skin of a drum. A chickadee calls, and then a nuthatch. Dee dee. Yank yank.
Cold and clear, but one cricket still manages a slow creak. A nuthatch calls heh-heh-heh — so I didn’t dream that cackle outside my window!