Gray skies with a bitter wind. Colored leaves fly past. A pair of gray squirrels meet on the trunk of a black locust and touch snouts.
wind
October 22, 2025
Wind breaking up the yellow-bellied clouds. Tulip tree samaras spin like the blades of invisible helicopters—a whole squadron headed out into the meadow.
October 20, 2025
Wind and rain at dawn. Half an hour before sunrise, a great twittering erupts from the meadow as hundreds of white-throated sparrows, sheltering deep in the goldenrod, begin to awaken.
October 14, 2025
Heavily gray skies at mid-morning. A tree cricket trills in the garden—a bright drone note. The wind goes past, releasing a small crowd of yellow leaves.
October 8, 2025
Early-morning rain past, a chill breeze stirs in the tulip poplar beside the springhouse, four-lobed leaves waving like jazz hands on a thousand-armed bodhisattva, some green, some yellow.
June 20, 2025
Breezy and cool—a front at last. A train keens in the distance. The whispery discourse of trees in which cicadas have lapsed for a few long moments into silence.
June 19, 2025
Sun and a breeze have come to dry us out; everything shines and drips. A cerulean warbler and a field sparrow sing back and forth across the woods’ edge.
May 31, 2025
Sun through thin clouds and a cold breeze. A hummingbird buzzes in and circles the spot where a hummingbird feeder last hung four years ago.
May 28, 2025
Cold rain. The wind from a distant storm stirs the bright green, half-grown walnut leaves, moving on into the darker greens of the forest.
May 25, 2025
A cold wind with thin clouds admitting a semblance of sunlight. The red-eyed vireo recites his refrain as doggedly as ever, not to be outdone by a downy woodpecker’s fast fills.
May 19, 2025
Breezy and cool. A pileated woodpecker hops along a log fallen into the meadow, her scarlet crest bobbing among the dames’-rocket.
May 18, 2025
In warbler season, even the wheezing of the wind seems open for interpretation: green-winged or oak-throated? The sky is achingly clear between the clouds.
May 17, 2025
A clearing wind. The wood thrush comes into the yard to sing as blue sky appears. The aspen I planted last year is already big enough to mime applause.
May 10, 2025
A cold wind on a gorgeous morning, the newly leafed-out forest shimmering, shot through with shafts of golden light and all the birds singing.