Before dawn, before the nearby quarry starts up, you can almost hear the stars glittering. In a dark enough sky, it turns out that Orion has a whole nest of […] | Continue reading
More clouds than sun. A smell of woodsmoke. Stillness haunted by the distant sounds of wheels and engines. | Continue reading
Cold and still, with yesterday’s rain still dripping from the trees, and fog shot through with sunlight rising into blue. Scattered chirps give little indication of the hordes of migrants […] | Continue reading
Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and […] | Continue reading
The rain slackens toward mid-morning and I can hear chirps and twitters: warblers in their muted autumn colors foraging for breakfast in the treetops. | Continue reading
Rain. The rumble of a distant jet. A squirrel crouches on a limb with her tail over her head, chiseling open a walnut. | Continue reading
The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles […] | Continue reading
Before daybreak, the crooning and snarling of raccoons up in the woods. In the silent aftermath, something large and dead crashes down. | Continue reading
Fog that lasts for hours, blurring the lines between night and day, and between sky and ground for night-flying migrants now foraging all along the woods’ edge—a cloud full of […] | Continue reading
Overcast and damp. Anxious notes from a nuthatch following the crash of a rotten limb up in the woods where a screech owl had been trilling. | Continue reading
Dark and rainy at sunrise, the cardinal like a pilot light in the recesses of the lilac chirping back and forth with his mate. | Continue reading
Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk. | Continue reading
Drizzle before dawn, settling into steady rain by daybreak. At the woods’ edge, two chirps from a towhee and the soft call of a migrant thrush. | Continue reading
Under a gray sky, small birds move silently through green and gold leaves, while the wren yammers away behind the shed. | Continue reading
Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds. | Continue reading
Clear and still, except for the periodic crashing down of a walnut, each one followed by a small entourage of yellow leaves. The sun clears the ridge and the trees […] | Continue reading
8:00 o’clock church bells and the fog has nearly all lifted. A nuthatch calls down by the stream, soon joined by chickadees. From my mother’s house, the measured voices of […] | Continue reading
Heavily overcast and still—a perfect morning to watch walnut leaves fall: the flutterers, the gliders, the tumblers, the spirallers, and the rare ones that float straight down. | Continue reading
A white sky only now that the banks of white snakeroot are beginning to fade. In between: green and gold. The drought-struck lilac dying back. | Continue reading
Sun in the top of the tall tulip poplar—yellow crowning yellow. The last nighttime cricket falls silent. Off through the thinning woods, new chinks of sky. | Continue reading
Quiet and cool. A hummingbird hovers over the bright pink cover of my book: Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon. | Continue reading
Distant shots from a semi-automatic: poppoppoppoppoppop. The flutter of a falling leaf. A squirrel’s footsteps on the roof. | Continue reading
6:24. The cardinal sings a few times and falls silent. 6:26. The whippoorwill calls a few times and falls silent. 6:29. The Carolina wren starts up. | Continue reading
Cool and still with murky sunlight and yellow leaves dropping one by one. From the north and east, the guttural hum of industry—that drone note. | Continue reading
Another gorgeous, cool morning. Two ravens fly over at sunrise, croaking. A phoebe in the distance is just audible under the usual cascade of wren song. | Continue reading
Clear and still. A chipmunk chips from her hole in the rock wall beside the porch, getting a much more resonant sound than her rival up in the woods. | Continue reading
A cold and cloudy dawn. The thump and clatter of hooves, deer crashing through the underbrush—hounded not by a predator but the first stirrings of rut. A migrant thrush’s soft […] | Continue reading
Breezy and cool at mid-morning. A blue jay’s rusty croon in the crown of an oak. The plop of dropped acorns. | Continue reading
A soft, steady rain at dawn. At sunrise, a hummingbird buzzes in to sip from the jewelweeds under the porch roof dripline. | Continue reading
Another cool, clear, still morning. The bang of a walnut on a metal roof. A chipmunk’s metronome. | Continue reading
A dawn too cold for crickets, and still except where a squirrel makes a branch tremble. From the top of a black locust, a hairy woodpecker’s nasal chirps. | Continue reading
Another cold morning. The sun through thin cirrus casts a wan light over the clouds of blossoming snakeroot. | Continue reading
The coldest morning since May, with an inversion layer bringing sound from the east—the slightly quieter direction. The Carolina wren duets with beeping quarry trucks. | Continue reading
Crystal-clear and cool. A screech owl quavers in answer to a distant trill as sun floods the treetops. Autumn is here. | Continue reading
Clear and cool. I watch a gray squirrel descend a tree, search its memory/the ground for a walnut, dig it up, and find a secluded spot under the lilac to […] | Continue reading
Overcast and damp. The roofs drip; leaves glisten. The sound of fast squirrel claws on bark. An animal under the house lets out a snarl. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast and still. Two whippoorwills call off to the east. Sunrise is imperceptible aside from a short blast of Carolina wren song. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet, save for the occasional wood pewee. The bird-sound app flags a barred owl in my stomach. | Continue reading
Warm and humid, with a sickle moon high overhead. I battle mosquitos in between reading about eastern equine encephalitis on my phone. | Continue reading
Cool and quiet at sunrise. A hummingbird circles the space where a nectar feeder hung years ago. A black cherry tree at the woods’ edge is turning orange. | Continue reading
A half moon hangs overhead, its light lost to the dawn. A bat makes one last circuit of the yard, where the white tops of snakeroot are beginning to show. | Continue reading
A desultory dawn chorus of one Carolina wren and a towhee. I consider baring an arm to stop the mosquitoes from whining in my ear. | Continue reading
Clear and still, except for some noise from the quarry—the crusher digesting its breakfast of stone. A deer’s footsteps up in the woods. A scolding squirrel. | Continue reading
Another cold, clear morning. Robins streaked by the molt contend with blue jays for the best perches in the tops of the tall locusts, answering jeers with tuts. | Continue reading
Clear, cold, and still. A hummingbird finds the one wild bergamot blossom hiding next to the porch and circles its purple mop-head, tonguing a dozen tubes. | Continue reading
Clear and cold, with an inversion layer making the hollow noisy with traffic. When it wanes: church bells. A blue jay’s distress call. | Continue reading
Windy and cold, with the sun in and out of clouds. The Carolina wren’s usual enthusiasm sparks a red-eyed vireo to call exactly once. | Continue reading
Light rain at sunrise, drumming on the porch roof—not enough to still the crickets or keep the hummingbird from her appointed rounds. | Continue reading