Summer night

Still no cicadas. Maybe the ones we heard last year go to sleep for seventeen years? Some do, then emerge from the earth to surprise everyone again. I have become used to cicadas in summer: in France, they accompanied me on walks up the paths to the Vercors.

Drifted in and out of sleep last night.

Birds were singing in the dark. Quiet trilling, gentle, like a lullaby.

There are no nightingales here--and they did not sound like nightjars.

May have been the Northern Mockingbirds having a late night?

Early morning, and the biggest egrets are one-legged sleeping around a pond in the wetlands. Sometimes they wake up there: sometimes, perched in one of the old, empty-leaved trees.

And then I heard a rattle... one maraca...

Maybe we wil have cicadas this year after all.