yellow-bellied sapsucker

October 6, 2023

Dave Bonta October 6, 2023

Heavily overcast—what the weather app calls “light rain”—with a crow yelling in the distance and a yellow-bellied sapsucker mewing like a kitten.

Dave Bonta June 15, 2022

The sun clears the trees sooner than seems possible, and the gnatcatcher’s extreme excitement is not a good sign. A sapsucker calls.

Dave Bonta April 10, 2021 1

Overcast with 100% chance of yellow: daffodils, forsythia, spicebush. A yellow-bellied sapsucker looking all tapped out.

November 23, 2023
Blue-gray layered with yellow-orange a half hour past sunrise. The creek is still singing about Tuesday’s rain, and the one oak at the woods’ edge…
November 23, 2022
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up…
November 23, 2021
Clear and cold. Two nuthatches trade riffs at the edge of the woods. I watch the rising sun crest the ridge one blazing filament at…
November 23, 2020
Cold with a clearing wind. The now nearly leafless lilac fills with juncos and chickadees. Nuthatches on adjacent trees exchange notes.
November 23, 2019
Clouds slowly vanish in the blue—like my own puffs of breath, but slower. Chickadees; a nuthatch. The forest floor goes from glow to shine.