A freakishly warm wind seasoned with rain. A red squirrel’s scold-call launches the dawn chorus: phoebe, wren, cardinal, white-throated sparrow. A turkey gobbles. | Continue reading
Sunrise from under a lid of cloud turning the ridge orange. The robin sings a few bars. A propellor plane fades into the distance. | Continue reading
Five degrees below freezing and half-cloudy at dawn, clearing off by sunrise. The robin is missing in action, offering no competition for the caroling of a Carolina wren. | Continue reading
A few degrees above freezing at sunrise. A titmouse’s monotonous song. The clouds turn orange and drift off like boats into the blue. | Continue reading
Dawn. A last glimpse of the moon through the clouds as the torrent of robin song is joined by a cardinal, a phoebe, the wren. | Continue reading
A damp, gray dawn sweetened by the calls of field sparrows and a bluebird up by the barn. A small shower passes through the woods, rustling like a millipede in […] | Continue reading
Clear, cold, and quiet. The rising moon gleams like a scimitar as it passes behind the big tulip tree, and emerges five minutes later as pale as a grub. | Continue reading
Patches of blue, and a pair of hawks arrowing north silhouetted against the clouds. An inversion layer brings traffic noise from over the ridge, but a robin’s soliloquy is the […] | Continue reading
Windy and cold. I sit in the sun all bundled up, listening to birdsong through two hats and a hood. My mother calls to tell me about a flock of […] | Continue reading
Thin, high clouds—enough to blur the edges of shadows. Whenever the robin pauses for breath, I can hear a phoebe calling up by the barn. Spring is here. | Continue reading
Cool and clear. At sunrise a red squirrel appears on the end of my porch instead of the usual gray squirrel, spots me, and moves over to the stone wall where chipmunks always sit, nervously peering all about. | Continue reading
A degree or two below freezing at dawn. The flat-tire moon fades into obscurity in the middle of a cloudless sky. The ridge turns red. | Continue reading
Gray aftermath of a strormy night. Still no phoebe or field sparrow. An icy breeze. | Continue reading
Dawn arrives between showers. I think about all the cicada larvae of Brood XIV stirring under the ground, preparing for the last and most eventful spring of their lives. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet. The gray hulk of a dead red maple by the road has dropped another small limb—former rung on my favorite ladder into the sky when I was […] | Continue reading
A few degrees above freezing and very still. The full moon hangs above the western ridge, fresh from its run-in with the earth’s shadow, glowing yellow. | Continue reading
Red not where the sun rises but where the clouds are thin, off to the north. A silent crow takes a seat in the treetops. The thump of a squirrel […] | Continue reading
Overcast at sunrise, the clouds begin to show cracks of blue. A song sparrow continues with his hip-hip-hurrahing long after the others have gone off to forage. | Continue reading
Another crystal-clear dawn. A song sparrow and a Carolina wren are trading licks, following initial solos from a robin and a cardinal, all over the whine of traffic. | Continue reading
In the half dark, the roar of Monday morning traffic from over the ridge. The last stars fade. A cardinal pipes up. | Continue reading
Clear and still, despite the madness of clocks losing an hour. Woodpecker drums. A squirrel rummaging through last year’s leaves. | Continue reading
Half an inch of wet snow has turned things white again, if not for long: the wind blows clumps of snow from the trees. The sun comes up. | Continue reading
Windy, cold and clear at dawn. A song sparrow pipes up from the depths of the lilac. The ridge turns red. | Continue reading
When the wind dies, I can hear the roaring of the creek. I sit in the dark, composing a limerick in my head.  | Continue reading
Rain. The stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard and disappears into the woods. The rattle of my metal roofs drowns out everything but a train horn. | Continue reading
A gray-wool sky, periodically crossed by Vs of geese. The snowpack has shrunk to an archipelago of white ice. A neighbor’s chicken is crowing over her latest creation. | Continue reading
A red dawn. The talking drums of pileated woodpeckers: one bass, one snare. A white-throated sparrow falters half-way through his song. | Continue reading
Bitter cold and overcast. After a bit of belly-grooming, the stone-wall chipmunk races across the yard to forage under the lilac, only to be chased off by another chipmunk. She […] | Continue reading
Sun and clouds and a turkey vulture rocking in the wind. Then the blue fissures close, and it’s another gray day. | Continue reading
A fresh dusting of snow: winter’s not done with us yet. But the chipmunk who lives in the stone wall next to the porch is up, poking around under the […] | Continue reading
Hard rain at daybreak easing off into fog. The ground under the trees is still more white than brown. The voices in the creek have increased from a symposium to […] | Continue reading
A sky of pastel colors occasionally graced by a bleary sun. Strings of non-migrant, local Canada geese fly low over the trees, restless, their cries still full of elsewhere. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast with a steady drip of snowmelt. From one valley, the sound of trains; from the other, a killdeer. A snow goblin left by the plow topples over into […] | Continue reading
Contrails fading to white after sunrise—toppled columns from a ruined temple. Three bugle notes from a lone goose. The dull roar of traffic. | Continue reading
Clear at dawn, with the bright crescent moon inching teeth-first through the treetops. A mourning dove plays a downbeat rooster. | Continue reading
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree. | Continue reading
Gray skies and a bitter wind. Snowflakes keep finding the open book in my lap; I sweep them off with a glove before they can vanish into the ample whitespace […] | Continue reading
An hour after sunrise and the squirrels are mostly back in their burrows. Weak sunlight on a snowfall fine as flour. A mourning dove calls. | Continue reading
Cold, thinly overcast, and very quiet. The spot where the sun must be glows like a yellow door among the ridgetop trees. | Continue reading
Deep cold at dawn. Icicles hanging from the eaves bend this way and that. The trees creak and groan. The *chip, chip* of a cardinal waking up. | Continue reading
The winds that buffeted the house all night have mostly retreated to the ridgetop—a distant roar. A few, yellow-bellied clouds add their scattered flakes to the windblown snow drifting atop […] | Continue reading
Daybreak finds each twig and weed encased in a quarter inch of ice. Every five minutes, another crack or crash from up on the ridge. The fog thickens. | Continue reading
A faint shimmer of precipitation from a leaden sky. The vole in the yard is gathering more bedding. A white-throated sparrow sings once and falls silent. | Continue reading
Bright sun belies the bitter wind. A tiny but perfect snowflake lands on the back of my hand, that watchword for familiarity gloved in the skin of a cow. | Continue reading
Rain falling on snow: a soft sound that slowly grows harder, like a fantasy evolving into a belief. The dark tree limbs still look dapper in their new white sleeves. | Continue reading
The slow fall of small snowflakes never quite stops. A squirrel with a half a tail bounds past, carrying his freshy disinterred breakfast: a black lump of frozen walnut. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast at sunrise. A meadow vole is busy with home improvement, popping out of the ground every minute or two to gather stiltgrass. | Continue reading
A dark sky at dawn with one bright gash. As it eases shut, an icy breeze springs up. The stream gurgles softly in its sleep. | Continue reading