Mid-morning, a lid of clouds slowly closes over the east. Caroling juncos fall silent. The wind picks up. | Continue reading
It’s cold, gray and still, but the woodpeckers are living it up: pileateds hammering, red-bellieds whinnying, and a downy drumming his loudest. | Continue reading
Sun blazing through the trees illuminates lost snowflakes, miles from the nearest cloud. A chipmunk with hibernation insomnia races up the driveway. | Continue reading
Wind and rain. In the gray-brown woods, two silent pileated woodpeckers flap from tree to tree, wings like a revelation in black and white. | Continue reading
No sign of the sun after a lurid dawn—the forecasted rain has its P.R. down. I can smell it. I listen for the first drops through a torrent of birdsong. | Continue reading
High clouds yellow with sunrise appear to have some business off to the east. A downy woodpecker on a dead locust limb fires off a blast beat. | Continue reading
An hour past sunrise, it’s mostly clear and quiet except for two red-bellied woodpeckers, their whinnying starting to sound almost like purrs. | Continue reading
The western ridge turns barn-red with sunrise. As it fades to gold, down in the hollow a mob of crows starts up, jeering, denouncing. | Continue reading
Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes. | Continue reading
Bright and cold. I pull down my hat brim to see the shadows of the trees striping my yard. Valley noise is minimal but for one train horn, clear as a blast on an angel’s trumpet. | Continue reading
Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind. | Continue reading
Nearly an hour past the alleged sunrise, the sky brightens and birds recover their voices, wren and nuthatch synchronizing like some sort of happiness machine. | Continue reading
An hour before sunrise, the yard is flooded with moonlight for a few moments, till the rift in the clouds drifts on to uncover a sliver of dawn sky, the […] | Continue reading
The squirrel who de-husks walnuts atop the wall next to the lilac stops short when she sees that her piles have been swept away. She noses the spots, tail flickering […] | Continue reading
Dull gray clouds since well before sunrise, but the cardinal is an engine of cheer. It’s two degrees above freezing. Anything could happen. | Continue reading
Full moon over the ridge an hour before sunrise turns fuzzy as thin, high clouds move in, fading out instead of setting. A dog barks in the distance. | Continue reading
-14C at dawn and very still. A sound like a rifle shot as some tree’s heartwood splits open. Two distant bugle notes from a Canada goose. | Continue reading
-12C with a wind. Which one of those small pink clouds is responsible for these snowflakes? My oil furnace trembles under the house like a wounded animal. | Continue reading
Clear and cold at the crack of dawn. A propeller plane comes blinking out of the east, banks and follows the mountain south, engine fading into a quiet trickle from […] | Continue reading
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this: bitter cold with the ground mostly bare. Chickadees are having a fracas. Snow drifts down from a clearing sky. | Continue reading
A skim of snow overnight; a front has blown in and the birds are so much quieter. But a cold, gray morning is fine for gray squirrel romance: a pair […] | Continue reading
The snowpack is holey again. A sunrise sky is visible through the trees on the ridgetop for just a few minutes until the fog descends. | Continue reading
Dull mid-morning light—the threadbare snowpack is brighter than the clouds. A titmouse sounds the predator alarm and a squirrel cleaning off a walnut climbs a few feet higher into the […] | Continue reading
Mid morning, and the strong sunlight reveals in every shadow-casting hummock how snugly the ground’s coat of snow has come to fit. | Continue reading
Snow squall. A squirrel with two pursuers ascends a birch and turns on them, chasing again and again as the snow stops and clouds turn yellow. | Continue reading
Gray sky raked by swaying treetops, the wind made visible by squadrons of snowflakes flying this way and that. The sound of rodent teeth. | Continue reading
My phone insists it’s snowing, but the clouds hold their fire. The ground is nearly bare again; it could use a fresh coat. The creek has subsided to a quiet […] | Continue reading
Sunrise layers of yellow and blue, cloud and clear. High in a black birch, two chickadees feed and squabble. | Continue reading
An inch of wet snow clinging to everything. The juncos and chickadees sound the most excited I’ve heard them in a month—which might also be due to the sun’s cameo […] | Continue reading
Sky the color of faded jeans. It’s cold. The crash of a dead limb falling from the treetops where two female squirrels are eluding suitors. | Continue reading
Gray sky, and the ground scrofulous with snow—an eighth of an inch. A sudden cacophony of mourning dove wings. | Continue reading
Overcast with short-lived bright patches in the clouds. A cardinal sings a few notes at the time indicated for sunrise. Then it’s back to the sound of the wind. | Continue reading
Steady, hard rain blurring the transition from night to day. How much silence there’d be if it were snow. How much more light. | Continue reading
Damp and not as cold. A squirrel loses a persistent follower in a treetop maze. The risen sun almost breaks through the clouds. | Continue reading
Cold rain. The last scrap of December’s snow in the yard has shrunk to the size of a handkerchief. A back-and-forth between a titmouse and a chickadee. | Continue reading
Coyotes yipping up on the ridge before dawn. I try to guess the weather based a jet’s contrail—not too long—in the faint light of a crescent moon. | Continue reading
Cold (20F/-7C) and clear. The half-moon is an ear cocked to the west, where sunrise spreads down the ridge like an orange rash. | Continue reading
In the pre-dawn darkness, something is barking up on the ridge—a disconsolate sound, nearly inaudible over the bitter wind. | Continue reading
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow. | Continue reading
Fog prolongs the dawn well past sunrise. How long will squirrels keep scolding after a cat has slunk away? Ten minutes and counting. | Continue reading
Still air and a heavy frost. A pair of ravens fly side by side over the porch, one calling like a crow—falsetto—the other like a death rattle. | Continue reading
Overcast but bright, and very quiet apart from the stream’s gurgle. Two squirrels seem to be hanging out, but only one acts amorous—the other remains focused on her walnut. | Continue reading
The ground is white again. Bright spots in the clouds that could be moon or dawn. The deep breathing of the pines. | Continue reading
Heavy gray sky. A screech owl’s descending quaver. And then it’s sunrise, according to my phone and the crows. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet, with a fresh dusting of snow. A squirrel loses its nerve and backs off from a death-defying leap. | Continue reading
A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees. | Continue reading
Fifteen minutes after sunrise, the cloud-lid lifts, and a bright seam appears above the horizon. A white-throated sparrow sings two notes and stops. | Continue reading
The mountain is loud with running water; it sounds like March. Returning from hunting, the feral cat gives me a baleful glance as she slinks under the porch. | Continue reading