Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind.
wind
February 3, 2023
-12C with a wind. Which one of those small pink clouds is responsible for these snowflakes? My oil furnace trembles under the house like a wounded animal.
January 26, 2023
Gray sky raked by swaying treetops, the wind made visible by squadrons of snowflakes flying this way and that. The sound of rodent teeth.
January 20, 2023
Overcast with short-lived bright patches in the clouds. A cardinal sings a few notes at the time indicated for sunrise. Then it’s back to the sound of the wind.
January 14, 2023
In the pre-dawn darkness, something is barking up on the ridge—a disconsolate sound, nearly inaudible over the bitter wind.
January 13, 2023
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow.
January 9, 2023
The ground is white again. Bright spots in the clouds that could be moon or dawn. The deep breathing of the pines.
January 6, 2023
A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees.
December 24, 2022
-2F/-20C. Even under two hats and a beard, the windward side of my face turns numb. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas: bleak and frost-haunted.
December 23, 2022
Back after a 10-day absence, I watch a front move in: blowing curtains of white. It’s as if winter had been waiting for me. Juncos twitter and hop.
December 1, 2022
Treetops rock and sway in the wind—a restive mountainside. A few snowflakes fly this way and that.
November 28, 2022
Mostly overcast and quiet, apart from the wind. A squirrel with an acorn in her mouth pauses for a split second at the end of a branch, then leaps.
November 20, 2022
As cold as yesterday but with orange-bellied clouds and a wind. A tulip tree seed helicopters into the yard and rises up over the house.
November 18, 2022
January weather, blustery and cold—and just as in January, two gray squirrels play amorous hide-and-seek on the trunk of the big tulip poplar.