A red-eyed vireo beside the porch with his back to the cold wind, neck feathers buffeted into a crest, singing in the weak sunlight.
white-breasted nuthatch
Thin clouds at mid-morning. Four nuthatches in the treetops are all raising the same argument, the sun a yellow limit point in their midst.
Overcast and still, apart from the nasal calls of nuthatches. The few remaining spots of snow resemble nothing so much as blotches of mold.
It doesn’t take a hard wind to get the trees talking, merely the right wind. A nuthatch’s nasal commentary. The whistling of doves’ wings.
Rain and fog. Nuthatches, a wood pewee, the liquid song of a winter wren. Behind me, loud thumps from some large animal under the house.
Close your eyes and it could be any season: a Carolina wren; a scolding nuthatch; twittering finches; a loud, hoarse cough up in the woods.
The same woodpeckers and nuthatches that we heard all winter, but with flickering leaves. The same wind as yesterday, but with golden light.
A red sunrise. Loud rending sounds as a gray squirrel peels bark from the dead elm tree in the yard, hanging upside-down like a nuthatch.
Chickadees and nuthatches are exchanging news, each in its own language as always. I’m watching snow, but hearing the hiss of sleet.
Two nuthatches trade insults from adjacent trees, yelling through their noses like warring doormen in their blue-gray livery.