I went back to bed for a bit. Got up, studied dragonflies for a bit.
And then, after a phone call from a friend, I decided to do the Carden thing - take a trip down Victoria Road and over to Wylie Road. And what a trip it was.
The first bird of note: a shrike. I'd seen one in this very spot last week; it seems it's sticking around. And the sound associated with the shrike is.......human swearing as it flies out of range just before I can push the shutter on the camera.
While stopped for the shrike, I become aware of other Carden sounds.
Upland sandpipers are wolf whistling in the distance and peeping right there on the fencepost.
Meadowlark lemon is everywhere. There are peents and rattles and that glorious clear song celebrating the arrival on the breeding grounds.
A savannah sparrow pops up from the grass and stands on a fence post but, again, not quite long enough to be captured by the camera.
Red-winged blackbirds chack and gurgle over territories.
Starlings whistle and squeak and murmur.
Both a great blue heron and a turkey vulture flap and soar overhead, soundless.
Snipe are winnowing high up in the sky and wheeting from deep in the grass.
Turning onto Wylie, there is a bluebird, sitting silently beside the babbling roadside stream.
A chorus of chorus frogs strum their combs.
The tires splash through the ever-present puddle.
A song sparrow settles into a tree, practicing its song between bouts of grooming.
A kestrel sits in a dead tree watching my approach and takes to the air when I'm just three steps away from the fence which would have provided support for an over-extended camera.
A tree sparrow quietly explores a sumac while robins whinny and sing.
A lone leopard frog snores once, twice; a couple of geese argue with honks on a distant pond.
A single chipping sparrow trills and, out there, someone sings a song both repeated and varied. Was that a brown thrasher?
As I move along to try to locate it, I am distracted by an even more distinct song. Looks like a grackle but sounds very much different. Rather like a rusty gate. Rather like a rusty blackbird. Hard to see the rust against a difficult sky but the gate and the eye and the bill are right.
A pair of mallards quack - how quaint the sound - as they move further away from my approach.
Then the rain starts plopping, leaving ripples in the water.
The wind rustles in the trees; the nose sniffs, running in the cold.
Back in the car, turn on the heater. Warm, warm, cold fingers.
Stop at the puddles to listen again. Turn off the heater, hear the chorus of combs and see the sandhill crane, no bugling this time, just steady wingbeats carrying it off to the distance.
On the return trip up Victoria Road, mourning doves coo their sad song.
The windshield wipers are squeaking.
A turkey gobbles and shimmies his wings, trying to entice his two female friends that he is better than the other turkey tom gobbling from the adjacent field.
A quick stop at the pond, a pair of bufflehead dive and come together and eventually flap the water in an anxious flight away from an unseen danger.
These are the sounds of Carden today.
