May 31: June bugs

June bugs bounce off screens
in the velvet dark,
my only company.

May 30: Run

First run in a few months, could only manage about a mile. But I had to start somehow. Today was spring's first very warm day--in the 80s--and the only bird heard was a cardinal blurting out his staccato song at day's end.

As I jog slowly
down the busy roadside,
I step on deer tracks.

May 29: Rain again

After a brief respite from rain and drizzle, wet weather returns. I didn't have the heart to stop the jay from stealing peanuts from the bird feeder this afternoon, it looked so wet and miserable. A bit like my state of mind. The grey squirrel, however, still had to go.

Bedraggled blue jay,

I won't shoo you from my feeder

this time.

May 28: Spruce forest

Walking on my favorite trail through Cathedral Woods, the path soft, well-padded with spruce needles and thick, bright moss, rotting stumps of fallen spruces and cones rolling underfoot. From beyond the dense wall of spruces, long ethereal song of the Winter Wren. This is a magic place. No wonder the children build fairy houses here.

Kinglet's high-pitched song
spills down like rolling cones
from the spruce tops.

May 27: Dead bird

Some migrating birds get this far in their journey and still don't make it. Today a dead kingbird was found on a beach. We could tell by its prominent breastbone, sharp through its soft feathers, that the bird had completely depleted its fat stores. It had flown thousands of miles from South America this spring, only to starve in the fog on a small Maine island.

The kingbird wasn't the only dead bird found. But the other casualties, a Canada Warbler and two yellowthroats found in the middle of a trail, were victims of cats--a fate somehow even more tragic than simple depletion and exhaustion.

Dead kingbird in hand--
sad discovery of sharp bones,
hidden red crown.

May 26: Birds on the beach

Monhegan. Days of rain and fog have grounded migrating songbirds, forcing them to forage in the wrack on the beach for food to get them through until they can continue their flight northward. Colorful redstarts flitted like butterflies on the sand, hopped around at our feet.

Suspecting this kind of situation, our friend Derek had brought mealworms to share. The birds were so hungry that they overcame their usual shyness and ate them right out of our hands. Even flycatchers were chasing mealworms tossed in the air.

I can barely feel it,
this small bird
feeding in my hand.

Wet and bedraggled American Redstart resting

Redstart with a mealworm

Derek feeds a redstart mealworms from his hand

May 25: Flowering trees

Drive around now and everywhere white and pink flowering apple, cherry, and crabapple trees shine amid the surrounding green leaves, veritable clouds of flowers. Up close, the rain has released their redolent fragrances, each tree its own bottle of fresh spring perfume. Old apple trees appear in the most unexpected places, reminding us of a forest's former life as a field. And even the dullest front lawn is transformed by the presence of one tree in bloom.

Petals scattered by rain--
sidewalk a black canvas
for spring's wild art.

May 24: Continuing rain

A curtain of water makes more vivid the green tapestry of the spring trees. Clouds and mist soften the contours of the landscape, create a background of grey and white against which the trees shine even more brightly. A stand of beech trees, waving chartreuse leaves larger than hands, is almost psychedelic in the fog. Birds are hard to spot in this weather--who has the patience to stand long in the rain, vision obscured by water dripping on binoculars?--but still they sing. Dry inside, I listen to hear them over the rain.

Rain drips off the roof,
its rhythm punctuating
robin's late day song.

May 23: Downtown bird

Walking to my car in downtown Camden tonight after enjoying pizza with friends, I was a little surprised to hear a Black-throated Green Warbler singing his buzzy song in the handful of trees in the tiny Village Green.

Over traffic hum,
over the spatter of rain--
one warbler singing.

May 22: Birds in fog

Sorry, I've been slipping up on the haiku-a-day lately. These early mornings birding followed by busy work days don't help my creative energy at day's end. Nor does being on an island with poor Internet connectivity, as I was last weekend and will be this coming weekend. But I'm never gone for long!

****

This morning, I led a bird walk at Beech Hill Preserve in Rockport. Yes, it was pouring. Yes, we all got soaked. But there's something so invigorating about hearing thrushsong in the misty distance as we pause on the muddy trail. Or seeing a towhee looming in the fog, its striking black, white, and rufous patterning barely discernable, his song magnified somehow by the moisture in the air.

Blueberry flowers drip rain.
Magnified by fog,
towhee sings loudly.

Eastern Towhee. Photo: Brian Willson.

May 20: Apple tree

Boughs laden with blossom,
fallen tree's trunk's
already cut and split.