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.
wood thrush
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.
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.
Crystal-clear and still. At first light, the soft calls of wood thrushes, no doubt tired and hungry after their all-night flights. Pale crowds of snakeroot seem to glow.
At ten minutes till sunrise, the first hummingbird buzzes in to the orange touch-me-nots. A wood thrush calls from the woods’ edge, but doesn’t sing.
Clear and cool. A migrant wood thrush calls softly at first light. It’s very still. Then the wrens wake up.
A wood thrush is singing in the distance. I shoo away the mosquito singing in my ear to listen.
Cool enough to seem autumnal, but for the wood thrush and hooded warbler calling from the woods’ edge and the hummingbirds buzzing in the bergamot.
Foggy at dawn for the wood thrush’s solo. The wild garlics are beginning to raise their egret heads.
Cool with thin clouds. Two wood thrushes fly into the woods, dead grass trailing from the leader’s beak. A chipmunk runs under my chair.
Filmy-winged insects drift through rays of sun. A wood thrush comes out into the meadow, hopping like a robin along the edge of the drive.
Another deliciously cool dawn. A wood thrush on the far side of the yard sings a simplified, less ethereal version of their call—the result no doubt of having been raised too close to traffic or industrial noise.
Dawn. Strips of cloud redden like a ladder of blood. But for sheer augury, nothing can top a blossoming hawthorn at the forest edge issuing a torrent of wood thrush song.
Cold and half-clear for a red sunrise. The stream is still quiet—more raininess than actual rain. From off in the distance, a wood thrush’s ethereal trill.