Chuck-wills-widow has just quieted. Dusk departs for dark. A silver sliver moon.

The neighborhood had its mockingbirds and house sparrows, zooming behind brown butterlies hatched after last night’s rain. The white-winged doves in full chorus. A kettle of kites wending west.

But in the small woods. among the juniper and the laurel, a companionable pair of painted buntings, both male. (Easy to tell the difference--the males the famous rainbow of color, the females pale green.) Brothers? Friends? Not competitors. I’ve never before discovered one in the wild away from feeders. Now, not one, but two. And then, the descending cuckkukukuku of the yellow-billed cuckoo.

Spring wilderness nested in suburbia.