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.
8/27/2023
Crystal-clear and still. At first light, the soft calls of wood thrushes, no doubt tired and hungry after their all-night flights. Pale crowds of snakeroot seem to glow.
8/27/2022
Under a clearing sky, nuthatch and vireo still claim and declaim. A black cherry tree, having dispensed its fruit, is turning a dull orange.
8/27/2021
Fog. A quiet gurgle from the stream, still digesting last night’s downpour. The only other song belongs to a vireo.
8/27/2016
Cool with a scrim of cloud. From high in the canopy, a scarlet tanager’s hoarse song—the first in weeks. A sudden sweet smell I can’t place.
8/27/2015
Two compound leaves atop a walnut branch feint and dodge like boxing lobsters in the wind. A syrphid fly makes a close inspection of my leg.
8/27/2014
Light from the rising sun diffracts off a spider web in the eaves, turning it all the colors of the rainbow as it trembles in the wind.
8/27/2013
A hornet nuzzles my arm like a hoverfly but doesn’t sting. In the garden, the buzz of hummingbirds dueling over scraps of bloom.
8/27/2012
A pileated woodpecker comes cackling into the dead elm, then quietly gets to work: hop down the trunk a few inches, listen for ants, repeat.
8/27/2011
A downy woodpecker lands on the dead elm, his black-and-white feathers against the barkless trunk as startling and dramatic as a totem pole.
8/27/2010
The sound of deer running through the woods, and from over the ridge, that highway whine: we race through the deserts of our own making.
8/27/2009
The low cloud ceiling is a tabula rasa for the arabesques of chimney swifts. A high-pitched rasping in the trees–some insomniac katydid.
8/27/2008
Carolina wrens counter-singing from the springhouse, her Zzzzit! simultaneous with his TeakettleTeakettleTeakettle: the sound of the steam.