Snowflakes dance wildly but all the daffodils can do is nod and sway. O sweet Canada, sings the sparrow.
white-throated sparrow
Hard frost. As the sky reddens, the meadow comes alive with chirps and trills. A milkweed pod’s frozen spill of gossamer.
25F degrees at dawn. A bat flies low over the meadow as the white-throated sparrows tune up. Frost-encrusted blades of grass seem to glow.
The slender reed of a white-throated sparrow’s voice trembles in the wind. A hole opens in the clouds, blue and sunrise pink.
A dark and rainy dawn. One especially well-harmonized train horn and the sparrows and wrens wake up.
Sunrise inches forward, chirp by chirp: towhee, white-throated sparrow. A rabbit gazes at me from the end of the porch with eyes dark as cisterns.
Just past sunrise. Ground fog in the meadow full of white-throated sparrows. A screech owl trills from the powerline.
In thin fog, the soft notes of juncos and white-throated sparrows taking their morning baths in the shelter of a dogwood beside the springhouse.
Mares’ tails reddening in the east. The reedy songs of white-throated sparrows. A raven’s nasal croak.
White sky and white ground meet in a blur of fog. Above the drumming of rain on the roof, a white-throated sparrow’s minor-key song.
Rainy and cold. White-throated sparrows call in different keys, each more plaintive than the last. The birches are fluttery with kinglets.
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.
Soft sun. Birds flit through the weeds beside the springhouse. A white-throated sparrow sings just the first, wavery note of his song.
Juncos’ soft whistles. A white-throated sparrow’s melancholy song. The joyful shrieks of our neighbors’ four-year-old grandchildren.