5:09 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 45 degrees, wind ENE 0 mph, June impersonating April. Sky: latent sunlight, a world swaddled in fog, visibility barely one hundred yards; serrated treetops softened, ridges erased. Mist impersonating rain condenses on leaves . . . drips, drips, drips—sounds like a shower, feels like a shower. Pants wet. Dogs soaked. Birds in woods sing regardless; amped up titmouse slings notes, voice slices through the fog like a warm knife through soft butter . . . hear, hear. Over and over.
After nearly a day of rain, permanent streams were somewhat refreshed but volume less than expected; mudbank on lower stream prominent but smaller.
Wetlands: far-shore evergreens soft, amorphous forms, grayish-white, a rolling wave frozen in place. Lone peeper peeping from somewhere in vast, misty green. Close by, an alder flycatcher calling from a forked branch on the top of alder, vertical, dead and broken. Perches upright like phoebe but smaller and grayer and without tail flick. freeBee, freeBee, freeBee . . . song today’s marsh giveaway. Foggy morning bonus, catbird, Cab Calloway with rufous undertail coverts, complex song—high, low, soft, loud, rambling warbles and screeches, phrases guttural and sweet, thrives on variation. I look from alder flycatcher to catbird, back and forth. Both lean back, lift their heads skyward and sing, their lower bills quivering with each note. But comparing the quality of a catbird's song to that of an alder flycatcher would be like comparing a jazz aria to a lifeguard whistle.
Pond: rising mist joins fog. Painted turtle at the surface, periscoping, a cautious disc that sinks when it spots me. Chestnut-sided warbler singing from the thickets along the eastern shore (Last year, he sang from the other side of the pond.)
White ash in various stages of leafing out. Black cherry and mountain maple flowering. Also blooming: false Solomon's seal and Jack-in-the-pulpit. In undergraduate botany, I called the wildflower Jack-in-the pupik (Yiddish for "bellybutton.") A simple twist of language I learned from my mother, who had converted the Dodgers' Black catcher, Johnny Roseboro, into the Jewish Johnny Rosenberg, whenever he caught Sandy Koufax.
AOR: robin eating numb worms and dead June bugs, hit and run victims.
Five flycatchers sing emphatic, simple songs, collectively balming a cool, wet morning: least; alder; great crested; phoebe; and pewee, spinning a high, clear mournful whistle. Flycatchers, known as suboscines, a related group of more than a thousand species of primitive songbirds with less than stellar voices, many of which produce their species-specific song without following an example. In other words, there's no learning—music innate, like breathing. Male phoebes, for instance, raised in isolation (or deafened), required no auditory feedback to produce their raspy, simple, and signature feebee, feebee.
On the other hand, hermit thrushes, which produce the most ethereal song in The Hollow, and catbirds, the most varied, are punctilious learners—listening, practicing, modifying. If either emerged from a lifetime of isolation singing fully developed songs, it would be as startling for an ornithologist as if a human child reared in isolation emerged singing My Back Pages.
So loverly! I hope you will keep procrastinating.
What a tribute to birdsong--you really are a poet/scientist, and I hope birds and their songs will be with you in your new home as well. Plus the reference to "My Back Pages" brought a wave of nostalgia over me, since Dylan and I are both now 80. I found this video of the 30th anniversary concert--what an amazing group sharing this powerful song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=rGEIMCWob3U&list=RDI50MV8jR-Go&index=2
As always, thanks for the inspiration--