At 6:45 this morning, thick, rumpled sheets of pink and dusky purple clouds spread across the eastern horizon. Above them hung a thin, still-bright crescent moon. The harsh morning rasp of a Brown Thrasher from deep in some bushes was the only sound against a quiet background.<\/p>\n
As I walked down the street, heading west, the air felt fresh and almost cool. A bat fluttered over the treetops. Two big wispy, fog-like clouds, turning pink, floated in the gray-blue sky. A few scattered birds called here and there \u2013 Bluebirds, Carolina Wrens, peeping Cardinals. Outside the entrance to the subdivision, a Catbird complained from the thickets of the Old Field, and traffic was already noisy on the highway just beyond the field. <\/p>\n
At the south end of the road where I turn around and head back, when I turned, I couldn\u2019t see the rising sun, but the clouds had spread and turned into a glorious display of gold, coral, and aqua blue, fringed with pure, snowy white. From a weedy stand of chinaberry trees, kudzu and privet, still in dark silhouette against the bright sky, came the sharply whispered song of a White-eyed Vireo \u2013 chik-peri-oo-chik!<\/span><\/p>\n Back inside the neighborhood, following a different road home that circles up and down steep hills and passes closer to a wooded creek, I heard the chatter of Titmice and Chickadees and the soft call of an Eastern Phoebe. Then, somewhat lost in thought about something I needed to do later in the day, my attention was drawn by a repeated emphatic chek! chek! chek!<\/span> Over and over again, just that one syllable. At first it puzzled me, and I stopped to listen \u2013 and then recognized the call of a Scarlet Tanager just before it added the rest in a confirming \u2013 chek-burrr!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At 6:45 this morning, thick, rumpled sheets of pink and dusky purple clouds spread across the eastern horizon. Above them hung a thin, still-bright crescent moon. The harsh morning rasp of a Brown Thrasher from deep in some bushes was the only sound against a quiet background. As I walked down the street, heading west, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}