Overcast and cool. The wood thrushes continue to call well past mid-morning. Beebalms are beginning to flaunt their spiky, scarlet coiffures.
wood thrush
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.
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.
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.
Singers change with the weather: in the mist, wood thrush and cerulean warbler. Scarlet tanager in the drizzle. Indigo bunting in the rain.
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.
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.
Cloudy and cool. The great-crested flycatchers are back with their dinosaur calls. From down-hollow, the faint carillon of a wood thrush.
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.
Another bright sunny morning—meaning the shadows are deep and full of unseen singers: scarlet tanager, cerulean warbler, even a wood thrush.
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.
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.
Far off through the woods, the bell-like notes of three wood thrushes—young ones mastering the music of their tribe before they disperse.
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.