woodcock

  • Nature Notes

    Freeze-Thaw In their deeply frozen state, the hill, fields and woods are a blanched, pale, brownish beige. Just before sunset, I spring two woodcock up from beside me. They rock away like dumpy wooden arks, their long, compass needle bills never wavering from the earth they quickly return to. Above me, the peregrine falcon flies […]

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  • Birds of the Night Hill

    As another storm comes through, we shelter in the woods. The laurel leaves are shining with wet and the tree trunks dark with it. We are not alone.  A hare is backed up in the bay between roots of an ash. Its rump pushed against the trunk, a kohl rimmed, lunar-eclipse of a haunted eye […]

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  • Nature Notes

    Fires in the Fall. Writing in my hut, I am distracted by a small, determined scraping. I suspect I know what it is, but I can’t be sure until I go outside and look: there, late on in the season, a magnificent hornet is methodically scraping the wood from the window, leaving tiny blonde stripes […]

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