Starlings.

In the fall, birds would hop and flit and perch on the branches not five feet in front of my face.  Bodies black, sprayed with white stars.  The interaction of sun and wing.  They gobbled the bright orange berries among the tree’s thinning, yellowing leaves.  They flashed and glinted and without warning launched themselves effortlessly, wings spread, out of the field of vision framed by my window.

The light goes early now.  Midday feels like afternoon; afternoon feels like dusk.  Night falls by five.  This morning two squirrels slalomed my tree’s bare branches, one black, one gray.  A solitary bird came by later, his feathers darker than I remembered, his beak half-dipped in ink.