Rain at dawn tapering off into another patter alongside the red-eyed vireo’s. Wood thrushes sing back and forth. From deep in the lilac, a house finch lets loose.
wood thrush
June 6, 2025
Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.
May 27, 2025
Overcast and cool. As the wood thrush fades in the distance, the brown thrasher parodies his song. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. The sun almost comes out.
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 1, 2025
A wood thrush is singing at the edge of the woods at sunrise—that old sweet song. Behind him, the tall hawthorn has just come into bloom.
October 7, 2024
Breezy and cool at dawn. Migrants trade notes as they explore the forest edge: towhee, phoebe, thrush. A lost passenger jet comes roaring overhead.
September 23, 2024
Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush.
September 9, 2024
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft call.
June 13, 2024
A crow gurgling in dispute to the east, a jake-breaking truck to the west… the wood thrush with his pure, bell-like notes gets no respect.
June 6, 2024
Low clouds trailing drizzle settle into the trees, where a wood thrush and a wood pewee are calling. From the wet meadow, an indigo bunting’s bone-dry song.
May 27, 2024
Dawn: a blurry moon just above the trees losing its glow. The wood thrush’s ethereal song gives way to a red-eyed vireo sounding like a wind-up bird, going at twice normal speed.
May 12, 2024
Heavily overcast and cold. A redstart is calling from above the springhouse—a buoyant buzz—while a distant wood thrush makes me revisit my dreams.
April 19, 2024
A heavy white sky giving few hints of sunrise. In the distance, the faint bells of a wood thrush. A field sparrow’s accelerating rush toward silence.
September 7, 2023
Just at the point where the half-moon loses its share of the shadows, a migrant thrush calls from the woods’ edge: a few soft notes, then silence. The sky turns pink.