Six times in a row, the wood pewee chimes in right after the field sparrow. Don’t tell me birds don’t sing in part for the pleasure of it.
wood pewee
8/11/2011
Crystal-clear at sunrise: I’m aware of every smudge and scratch on my glasses. A wood pewee’s call reduced to a single, interrogatory note.
5/19/2011
Phoebe in the barnyard, pewee in the woods. What is it about cleared land that turns a lilting refrain into a burden, a shrill work song?
8/6/2010
A wood pewee snaps an insect out of the air, lands and sings, his mournful notes the only thing audible over my uncle’s banjo.
5/15/2010
From the luminous green wall of the woods, a pewee calls. Maple keys come spinning, take the place of yesterday’s hailstones on the porch.
8/14/2009
Thin fog. Now that the phoebes have left, their shy cousins the pewees have come out of the woods, and herald each sunrise in a slow drawl.
6/19/2009
Another dark morning. The wood pewee makes a rare visit to the edge of the yard, sings one, sad note, and snaps a brown moth out of the air.