5:14 a.m. 63 degrees, wind S 6 mph. Sky: cloud congested and humid. Permanent streams a little fuller, a little louder. Intermittent streams a little damper but still on life support. Red oak leaves not yet fully grown already developing galls, one of which, green and round and packed with tiny wasp eggs, sits on the side of the road. Raspy-voiced tanager also in the oaks, sings above the driveway within a screen of leaves. Miterwort and starflower in bloom.
DOR: Spotted salamander, charismatic megafauna of a nearby vernal pool. Chipmunk attended by a botfly and a pair of scarab beetles.
AOR: Earthworm weighed down by grit struggles west. I give it a hand. Slug, antennae up and far less gritty than the worm, also heads west . . . with no help from me.
A catbird in alders, adjacent to the wetland, sings. No thrush. Its song: long, rambling, harsh, inventive, rarely repetitive. An off-key jumble of discordant music. A mimic mimicking no one . . . except for a cat. When my boys were young I introduced them to simple bird songs. One afternoon, I called their attention to a gentle meow, meow. It's the call of a catbird, I said, sounds just like a hungry kitty. Jordan, his Yankee cap askew, stepped toward the shrubs for a closer look. Pop, he broadcasted, loud enough to stir leaves, it's not a bird. It is a kitty. We took it home.
Chestnut-sided warbler sings in small pin cherry, framed by white flowers. Pauses to eat a green caterpillar. Resumes song, until displaced by a hungry, noticeably bigger chickadee. Warbler flies to the next tree, a black cherry still in bud, the tree I usually find him in. More songs, more caterpillars.
Across from the chestnut-sided and south of the catbird, an alder flycatcher (FOY) perches in alder (where else). Wood thrush has moved on; hermit incubating or rearing; veery takes over, their voices spiraling downscale . . . and then fading like the month of May itself. Leaves me wanting more.
Back home: great crested flycatcher joins tanager in the oaks; phoebes nest in the barn, the garage, and on the solar hot water pipes (a little colony of phoebes; everybody calls at once); three male evening grosbeaks and two male rose-breasted grosbeaks, a convocation, jockey for position on the feeders; female grosbeaks join doves on the ground, demurely gather what the males drop. Everywhere and quiet, blue jays forage in the compost pile, on the feeders, on the lawn, in the raspberry patch, around the barn where the cat patrols.
Last night, just before eight, a snapping turtle visited the front lawn, heavy with eggs. An epic trek, half a mile maybe more. It probably took a week; life in the slow lane. Best guess: traveled the wetland north into a permanent stream; disembarked in lower pasture; crossed two pastures and entered front yard. A series of nest scrapes in the patio bluestone; none to her liking. I looked at the turtle. She stared me down; not revealing too much. Then, I gathered her, ferried her to the stream that flows into the south end of the wetland. Besides memory, the turtle left me her essence, in my car and on my lawn. After her release, my dogs visited the front-yard turtle site, nosed the ground, vigorously inhaling turtle. Then, they snorted, coughed, pawed their faces. There’s no accounting for taste.