Overcast and cool. The big tulip tree’s few leaves not damaged by last week’s frost still wave. Beyond the powerline, a wood thrush sings.
wood thrush
May 1, 2020
Out too late to hear the wood thrush, I’m stuck with a catbird’s Muzak version. The bridal wreath’s skinny bloom-fingers shake in the wind.
May 14, 2019
Overcast and cold. I watch a gnatcatcher in action, its chirp after each snap. The wood thrush makes a circuit of the yard trees, singing.
May 9, 2019
Singers change with the weather: in the mist, wood thrush and cerulean warbler. Scarlet tanager in the drizzle. Indigo bunting in the rain.
May 1, 2019
Mist. A fragment of blue in the top of an oak that could be a cerulean warbler. From the far ridge, the faint sound of a wood thrush.
September 12, 2018
Home! A migrant wood thrush softly calls over the roar of the rain-swollen creek. In the big tulip tree, a squirrel is building a drey.
May 4, 2018
Cloudy and cool. The great-crested flycatchers are back with their dinosaur calls. From down-hollow, the faint carillon of a wood thrush.
September 22, 2016
Clear and cold at sunrise. A migrant thrush calls from the not-yet-ruined temple of the trees. Overhead, the archaic smile of the moon.
June 19, 2016
Another bright sunny morning—meaning the shadows are deep and full of unseen singers: scarlet tanager, cerulean warbler, even a wood thrush.
May 12, 2016
Overcast enough that the wood thrushes are still singing at mid-day. The cloying scent of cypress spurge wafts over from my weedy herb bed.
April 30, 2016
Thin fog. Two wood thrushes skulk around the edge of the yard. A crow finds something hiding in the pines and tries to raise an alarm.
July 25, 2015
Far off through the woods, the bell-like notes of three wood thrushes—young ones mastering the music of their tribe before they disperse.
June 12, 2015
I can’t decide which I prefer: the thrush’s melancholy bells or a woodpecker’s rattle, the dark forest edge or the meadow full of mist.
May 9, 2014
Just after sunrise, a wood thrush lands in the trees across from the porch and looks quietly all around. Two hours later, he’s singing.