5:08 a.m. 39 degrees, wind WNW 1 mph, barely a pulse. Intermittent streams, more dark slashes than ribbons of water, slow puddly creeps, soon to stop moving altogether. Ash buds, dark knobs like knuckles bulge at the end of twigs; every other tree in leaf. Baby beech leaves, which drooped yesterday, rise today; close to horizontal. Small patches of tender sugar maple leaves on the road, a dozen or more per patch. No sign of foul play: neither holes in the leaves nor chew marks. Some with petioles, some without. (Spring in its infancy already dropping leaves.) Alders twigs, where the yellowthroats sing, bands of tiny, purple buttons . . . female flowers.
Two veeries (FOY), along the northeast edge of the wetland, their fluty and descending songs, full-bodied and haunting, spiral out of the willows. Voices of avatars. No way to pass through the valley without pausing to listen to a veery or any other species of thrush (even a husky-voiced robin). A million years before Tuvan throat-singers learned to mimic the sounds of the Russian steppe, a thrush began to harmonize with itself; to produce paired notes, independently and simultaneously, deep within its voice box. Poignant and evocative, the song of veeries echoes across Coyote Hollow and, for a moment, renders every other sound less significant.
As if to counterpoint the veeries: a white-breasted nuthatch calls from the pines, a short series of nasal yanks, evoking an image of Harpo Marx honking his toy horn.
A female sapsucker drills her maple, third day in a row. Muffled taps nearly inaudible. Imbibes sap. Her mate drums a distant tree, a volley of discordant raps, a territorial proclamation. American redstart (FYO). Male mallards have the main channel of the wetland to themselves. No geese. No mergansers. In the background, a guttural red-winged blackbird. A bittern raising Cain in the northwest corner . . . peepers beware.