6:09 a.m. 53 degrees, wind E 0 mph. Sky: congested; layers and swirls, mounds and puffs, mostly gray-blue; hints of mauve; no room for the sun to peek through . . . yet; smoke in the valley; traces of mist rise from both streams, even the one without surface flow. Permanent streams: upper, visible but rain-starved and silent; lower, dry to the west, puddled to the east. Like a mole gone below the surface. Wetlands: a gift of the clouds; saturated earthy tones under a magically lambent sky. Pond: gaunt mist drifts east; a methane bubble here and there, otherwise, a seemingly empty surface. The murmur of field crickets. The chatter of industrious squirrels; the splash of green pine cones, squirrel cut, and squirrel stored.
Crows loud and loquacious; white-breasted nuthatches, a slow southern drawl, as though just waking up; another pulse of red-breasted nuthatches navigate the Hollow. Mourning doves and American goldfinches, principle feeder birds. Juncos, almost invisible all summer, cameo roles around the barn, the roadside, the woodland underbrush. Blue jays being blue jays; petulant and persistent, cleave the morning with sharp voices.
On the cusp of September: one chickadee whistles; a red-eyed vireo reminds me of what I'm missed for the past two weeks . . . Earth's most monotonous song, now cherished, as summer pushes away from the table. Warblers high in the trees, screened by jittery leaves, comb through the canopy, feasting on caterpillars, inching south tree by tree, valley by valley . . . until nightfall and then, under cover of darkness, they move—a broad front of little birds, an outpouring of wings above a rumpled landscape. In May, when leaves were smaller and birds brighter, I tried to identify every warbler that passed by. Now, I'm left with a mobile feast of chips and buzzes and peeps. Mostly silhouettes and vague field marks.
Little birds whose behavior, shaped by the last Ice Age, means more to me than who they are.