June 5: Phoebe

neighborhood

phoebe’s regular perch

on our lawn chair

April 8: FOY

for a few minutes

it feels like spring

first phoebe calling

FOY=birder’s shorthand for “first of year,” first bird noted of a migrant species

June 26: Phoebe

Outside my office

something has rattled a phoebe.

I don't dare look.

Posted with Blogsy

April 6: Cold morning

below freezing
phoebe flits  where are the flies
how to stop thinking

March 31: Phoebe

Open window--

season's first phoebe singing

right where he always sings.

Posted with Blogsy

February 17: Early bird

Every year about this time I receive spreadsheets from an ornithologist at Colby College on which to record the spring arrival dates of bird species in my region. I guess they triggered something in my subconscious.

 

Even in my dream

I know the singing phoebe

is an illusion.

Posted with Blogsy

September 17: Sounds like spring

End of summer--

in the backyard

phoebe calling again.

 

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June 27: Phoebe

Phoebe calling--

such excitement at dawn,

how can I fall back asleep?

Posted with Blogsy

June 10: Phoebe anxiety

My co-worker found a phoebe nest on the ground next to our office with two fledged chicks nearby and one chick almost ready to fledge. We let them be as the mother phoebe was on hand and watching attentively. Later, during a meeting, we could hear her outside the window anxiously chipping at them and occasionally flying down to them with food.

anxious phoebe calling
while we're discussing money
what we pass on

April 13: Spring fever

The cat won't shut up.

And the phoebe, newly returned.

We all want to sing.

Posted with Blogsy

April 11: Morning phoebe

Waking to the phoebe,
reminded that spring's arrival
wasn't a dream.

These snowdrops are also a good reminder that spring is here!

June 17: Thunder

Thunderstorm rolled through this afternoon. You could feel the tension in the air before the sky began to rumble, then the release of rain.

Roll up car windows.
Phoebe says its name, frantic,
as thunder rumbles.

April 8: First phoebe of spring

The first thing I heard as I arrived at work this morning was the two-note song of the phoebe, and immediately my day improved. It's not the prettiest song--just a raspy "fee-bee" repeated over and over--nor is the phoebe, a simple, dapper gray and white flycatcher, the most striking of songbirds. But the bird's arrival shouts "Spring!" into the mild morning air.

Not long after, my husband emailed excitedly from his office that he too had heard his first phoebe of the season. Our pleasures are simple this time of year--we just want Mother Nature to keep reminding us that warmer weather, green leaves, flowers, and birds are slowly but surely returning.

First phoebe's song,
wasp exploring sunlit eaves.
Can you feel it in the air?

October 21: Chairlift ride

Rode the chairlift up Ragged Mountain this morning with my friend Janet so we could fully appreciate the fall foliage from on high, as it were. The Camden Snow Bowl is apparently the only ski area from which one has an ocean view. This time of year, when the surrounding forest is burnished gold and copper, the deep blue autumn bay shines in beautiful contrast.

View from just above the chairlift station, looking down Lookout

The highlight of the outing for me, besides the glowing landscape, was watching (and listening to) a pair of ravens circling the summit. Also, we unexpectedly came upon a little garter snake crossing a ski trail, undoubtedly on its way to a sunny ledge. But the real surprise was when we were back down the mountain, heading for the car. Behind one of the maintenance buildings I heard a singing phoebe. I think the warmth of this sunny day must have confused him into thinking it was spring.

Bald Mountain, as viewed from the Ragged Mountain chairlift

Phoebe's out-of-season song
makes the day feel warmer
than it really is.

September 14: Phoebe

While there's an autumn nip in the air, the photo period right now is similar to that in spring. And indeed, I've noticed a few things that have made me think of spring. Spring peepers, for example, were peeping away on Fernalds Neck a few days ago. Dandelions have made a tentative reappearance in my front yard. And today, the phoebe was back outside my window after a long absence, chirping repeatedly in the bayberry bush the same way it does when it first returns in March.

Phoebe returns. But
lush green canopy reminds
me it's summer's end.

April 10: Not snow

On Sunday we watched actual snow flakes falling. This evening it just looks like it's snowing: a mass of white insects has hatched in the back yard. A swirling swarm of them fills the air space between the house and river. As the last rays of the sun send a column of light through the yard, illuminating the flies, the sheer magnitude of the hatch becomes visible. Shifting my focus, I realize the little gnats are also stuck all over my screen window. They're almost tiny enough--my husband estimates them to be about a #26 fly--to fit through the holes in the screen.

It's too chilly to be hanging out in the back yard anyway, so I can enjoy the sheer visual marvel of this insect flash mob, as well as appreciate the return of non-biting insects in numbers sufficient to feed returning songbirds and trout down in the river. The phoebe singing outside my office window this morning, for example, will be grateful for this flying feast.

Flies swirling like snow
after all snow has melted--
air's never empty.

April 4: Surprises

This rather dreary afternoon the precipitation has shifted from rain to snow to rain to snow again. As I work at my desk, I periodically check to see what it's doing now. In the time it took me to type those two sentences, what were distinct snowflakes have dissolved into a near-invisible drizzle. I never know what I'm going to see each time I look up.

Earlier, a small bit of motion caught my eye--the first phoebe of spring perched on a branch in the back yard, wagging its tail. A few minutes later, more motion. Although I was alone in the house, I exclaimed, "Whoa!" out loud and ran for the camera... as a flock of six or seven turkeys strutted through the yard. A big hen stopped not ten feet from the window, and I swear she looked right at me, unperturbed, brazen.

Later, as I was heading out to my car, I did another double-take. There, in a barely exposed portion of my flower bed, a small cluster of snowdrops blooms, beautiful little white flowers glowing in the mud. Where did they come from? We've lived here six years and I've never seen them before. I never planted them. What a gift!

Stopped me in my tracks:
snowdrops risen from cold mud
as wet snow still falls.

July 3: Phoebes in the Trees

After finishing what I can hardly even call a run (one-mile, doctor-prescribed sort of rehab stint as I repair a back muscle), I stretched and did my strengthening exercises on the back lawn. Primarily solar-powered, I spent much of my time just lying on my mat admiring the patterns of leaves overhead and recharging in the morning light. Birds sang--blue jay, phoebe, song sparrow. A waxwing and what I think was a flicker passed silently overhead. An osprey's high-pitched calls carrying from Camden Harbor punctuated the calm. I savor such moments with my regimen completed and some time to fully relax and enjoy what's in front of me. For a few moments, at least, I feel strong and serene.

In this mood of mellow alertness, my mind sees everything as aesthetic, as something to note. Two phoebes darting overhead like living shadows amid the oak leaves, tails wagging, is not an unusual sighting. But because I observed them while happily lying on my back under the perfect blue sky of the first day of a long weekend, they seemed like something special--the ordinary transformed simply by the mood of the observer. Two phoebes, clearly a mated pair, fly-catching together on a summer morning. And nothing required of me but to lie there absorbing sun and watch them.

As I type this, one of those phoebes has perched on my clothesline, as if to assert that it's today's haiku inspiration, and a robin sings his cheery song somewhere down by the river. I have a feeling this is going to be a wonderful day to be alive. But aren't they all?

Phoebes in the trees,
sunlight, and nearby, ocean--
a day to savor.

April 3: Ice Cream and Frogs

We were in the Freeport area today, so we checked out the hawk watch for a few hours at Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal. On the short hike up, brown creepers, juncos, and phoebes sang. From the summit we--along with about ten other birders--watched kestrels zip past overhead, red tails shining in the sun. Sharp-shinned hawks flapped and glided in circles around us. In the distance, red-tailed hawks, an eagle, ospreys, turkey vultures, and a goshawk were picked out one by one by the official observers (and eventually us), each bird recognized by its silhouette and flight pattern. A pileated woodpecker called in the forest below us. Tree swallows darted past, the first I'd seen this year. A golden-crowned kinglet hopped in the branches of a nearby tree, crown flared. It was the kind of birding experience that gets my heart racing, and I had all intentions of writing a poem about it. However, as exciting as it was to see those raptors soaring by on their primeval quest to get north, and to see and/or hear other first-of-year birds, different signs of spring gave me today's "haiku moment."

First cone at Round Top:
two scoops with jimmies. Later,
first peeper chorus!

Friend and fellow poet Carl Little has a great spring poem called "Zones of Peeper," about driving around this time of year with the car window cracked open, passing through literal zones of frog song as you go past each vernal pool or wetland. For a moment, the sound pours over you, your heart thrills to it, and then it's gone. We only passed through one zone this evening, but the first one of the season is always the most exciting. Especially if you do so while finishing off an excellent almond joy and Indian pudding ice cream cone.