Clear, still, and unseasonably cold. A yellow-billed cuckoo calls, though not especially loudly, so perhaps the jury is still out on whether ‘sumer is icumen in’ or not.
yellow-billed cuckoo
Rain easing off from a dawn storm. The peony buds look almost ready to open. A raincrow croons.
Sun through thin clouds. A silent crow skims the treetops where a cuckoo coos. Someone’s offsprings beg for more breakfast.
Rising late, I’m in time to see the last cottontail going back under the house for a mid-morning nap. Cuckoos call in the distance. Common yellowthroat. Wood pewee.
It’s so clear I can see the tiniest specks of aerial flotsam drifting past the sun. A cuckoo switches to his most plaintive call.
The catbirds are much more furtive now going into the barberry that hides their nest. Two cuckoos call up a bit of rain.
Sun! A female hummingbird alights on a twig and a male begins rocketing back and forth in front of her. A cuckoo calls from the powerline.
Both species of native cuckoos are calling. A dragonfly courses back and forth across the sun-drenched yard until I almost see it as a pond.
Over the roar of a tractor, a cuckoo’s soft call. I find a recording on my iPad to verify the species: yellow-billed. He responds at length.
Trembling in the top of an oak where a squirrel gathers green acorns. Blurry shadows from a sun shining through cloud. A cuckoo’s soft call.
A question mark butterfly on the railing next to my boots. A cuckoo’s soft call sounds like an answer to the incessant caws of a crow.
Heard but not seen: a hummingbird skirmish. The mist thickens to drizzle, and right on cue a yellow-billed cuckoo—so-called rain crow—calls.
Quarry roar, how I have not missed you! But from the other direction, out of the mist, the yellow-billed cuckoo’s soft call.
Another quiet morning as the songbirds go through their annual molt. Cicada. Yellow-billed cuckoo. Last night’s rain glistens on the grass.