white-throated sparrow

Friday October 16, 2020

Dave Bonta October 16, 2020 0

Rainy and cold. White-throated sparrows call in different keys, each more plaintive than the last. The birches are fluttery with kinglets.

Dave Bonta January 2, 2020

Slow trickle of water in the ditch. Weak sun. My mom stops by to talk about logging and politics, and how the old field is full of sparrows.

Dave Bonta December 21, 2019

Soft sun. Birds flit through the weeds beside the springhouse. A white-throated sparrow sings just the first, wavery note of his song.

Dave Bonta November 13, 2019

Juncos’ soft whistles. A white-throated sparrow’s melancholy song. The joyful shrieks of our neighbors’ four-year-old grandchildren.

Dave Bonta April 18, 2019

The croak of a raven skimming the treetops. A white-throated sparrow fresh from bathing in the stream grooms itself in the weak sunshine.

Dave Bonta November 21, 2018

A singing contest between white-throated sparrows. Newly fallen oak leaves skitter back and forth on the snow under the trees.

Dave Bonta November 19, 2018

In my left ear, the sound of traffic going through the gap. In my right, white-throated sparrow, nuthatch, raven, jay. It looks like rain.

Dave Bonta November 17, 2018 1

Where the stream fans out beside the springhouse, birds hop down the snowbanks and into the water to bathe: sparrows, juncos, Carolina wren.

Dave Bonta October 24, 2018

Cold wind. A white-throated sparrow sings its plaintive, quavering song and falls silent. I sit in the reek of dogshit from my boot.

Dave Bonta October 14, 2018 1

Cold and heavily overcast. A jay switches from his own call to red-tailed hawk, then chickadee. In the meadow, white-throated sparrows.