An hour before sunrise, the clouds part to reveal the Pleiades above the ridge, as well as the V-shape that ancient Babylonians saw as a bull’s head—clearly a cosmic rat. A distant whine of tires as the first commuters take to the road.
Again I am the object of a hummingbird’s intense study from three feet away, this time for nearly a minute. Then she’s off to the back of the house and the banks of orange jewelweed there.
Cool and mostly clear. A raven croaks loudly from the vicinty of the powerline, just after the bird app tells me American Crow is my Bird of the Day. The smell of woodsmoke. A dog-day cicada starts up.
Foggy and cool, the spring still loud with yesterday’s rain. A murmur of voices from the other house—a radio tuned to the news. Somewhere up in the woods, a tree crashes down.
A soft shimmer of rain at dawn, increasing as the light grows. By sunrise it’s drowning out the wren’s song. A mosquito sings in my ear.
Cool and clear. Sunlight pours through a hole in the forest canopy into the crown of a black walnut tree, erasing the difference between green and yellow leaves. A mourning dove calls from the woods’ edge—not the full song, just a kind of two-syllable Wow.
A rare low-humidity morning begins with crows heralding the sunrise and a screech owl trilling in the distance. Yellow clouds fade to white. A bluebird begins warbling as I open my laptop.
An hour past sunrise, one last, brief shower before it clears—or so I hope. A deer walks out of the woods and up the driveway, followed by a fawn whose spots are just beginning to fade.
Heavily overcast at sunrise. A screech owl trills up on the ridge, answered by a trill from down along the road. Moments later, the first patter of rain.
Cool and clear, with bluebird and cardinal song. The leaves of the tulip tree sapling in my yard are nearly white with dew. I grease my boots.
Long-sleeve weather at sunrise. A female hummingbird hovers in front of me, then on either side, as if trying to recall where she knows me from.
Cool and breezy, with everything damp from another rainy night. An indigo bunting sings a few bars and falls silent. An jewelweed stalk still sways from a hummingbird’s visit.
Breezy and cool. The sun glimmers through thin clouds, prompting a Linne’s cicada to call—that stuttering buzz. A bluebird sings up by the shed.
Up late after being woken by a storm in the night. At mid-morning, the sun breaking through thin clouds, everything drips and glistens. A low thrum of crickets. The catbird scolds from the depths of a spicebush.