What a wonderful spring! We set up on the back porch every morning this month. Carl made a new feeder from a kit. The yard has been so full of life.

The morning it appeared was very still. I remember thinking the yard smelled different. Not bad. Just different. Like the air before a storm but without the humidity. Carl said he didn't notice anything. I wrote it down anyway.

Very hot summer. The birds have been different this year, we think, though it's hard to say exactly how. Carl says they seem "quieter than normal" but when we count the sightings the numbers are actually higher than last year. More birds, less sound. We are documenting.

Carl has not been sleeping well. He gets up before I do now and goes to the yard. He says he just likes the quiet. I asked him what he does out there and he said he watches. I asked what he watches and he was quiet for a moment and then he said the field. I did not ask more questions.

We used to watch David Attenborough's nature documentaries together on Sunday evenings - that was our ritual for years, the two of us on the sofa with the television on. Carl would identify the birds before Attenborough named them. I have not suggested it this summer. It doesn't feel like the right time for it.

He used to whistle while he did yard work. A tune, always the same one - I never knew the name of it. Something from the radio when we were young, I think. He stopped whistling sometime this spring. I realized it one morning and then I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard it. I didn't ask him about that either.

Note from archivist: I found thumbnails for several of the Baxter photos in the backup but they are corrupted - mostly gray with a small dark shape that could be anything. I've left the placeholders. - m.l.

We sent our photos of the unknown bird to the state ornithological society. They wrote back. The letter said the photos were "inconclusive" and that the "coloration and posture were not consistent with any regional species." They asked if we had more photos. We sent the ones from July. They did not write back again after that.

We have been seeing it more often. It is always in the same place - the corner fencepost by the east field. It is always there before sunrise and gone by full light. We have started getting up earlier. Carl says he does not mind the early mornings. I do not mind either. It feels important to see it before it leaves.

Carl's appetite has changed. He doesn't mention it and neither do I. He eats less. He says food doesn't taste the same as it used to. I have noticed the same thing but I don't want to make it into something. We are both fine. We are just adjusting to something we don't have a name for yet.

We have been corresponding with Warren Ellery about our sightings and he has been very kind and patient with us. He says what we're describing matches several other documented anomalies in the region - not birds exactly, but appearances that don't fit the expected patterns, that return to specific locations, that seem to be "observing" in a way that feels different from normal animal behavior.

We asked him what he thought it was. He said he didn't know. He said he was beginning to think the question of what something is might matter less than the question of what it is doing. We have been thinking about that.

I have been having a recurring dream about the fencepost. In the dream it is not a fencepost. I don't know what it is in the dream. I wake up knowing that I understood what it was while I was asleep and that I have forgotten it again. Carl says he has the same dream. We did not compare notes. We just knew.

The bird came back in June. I will not describe what was different about it. Carl photographed it and I told him not to show me the photograph and he agreed without asking why. I know why. I think he knows why too. We don't discuss it.

Carl stood at the fence for a long time that morning. I watched from the kitchen window. He didn't move for almost an hour. I made breakfast and ate alone and when he came in he sat down and looked at his hands for a while. His hands looked the same as they always have. I told him so. He said he wasn't sure about that.

The bird has not returned since June. We do not know why. The fencepost is still there. We still go out every morning.

Carl has been quiet lately. I have been quiet too. We are not sad, exactly. It is more like waiting. We are not sure what we are waiting for but we feel we should keep the schedule.

We have started noticing things we did not notice before. The field looks different at certain times of day - not wrong, just more itself than usual, if that makes sense. Warren said something like this in one of his reports and we understand it better now.

I put on a nature documentary one evening - Attenborough, the one about migration we had always meant to watch. Carl sat in his chair and did not look at the television. Just faced the window the whole time. We used to watch every week without fail. I turned it off after twenty minutes.

Carl's eyes are different. I don't mean they look different. I mean the way he uses them is different. He focuses on things for longer than he used to. He stands very still when he looks at something. Sometimes I say his name and there is a pause before he responds. He always responds.

I have not been updating the site. I am updating it now because I think someone may be reading it and I want to leave something accurate.

One thing I want to note before I write about Carl. When I drove home from the fence last Tuesday - the visit where I went out alone - the car radio was on when I got in. I don't remember turning it on. I may have turned it on without thinking. There was a song playing. I didn't recognize it, though it seemed like I should have. Very clear reception, like it was coming from somewhere close. I sat in the driveway for a minute and listened. When I finally thought to check the station the dial showed 1240 - there is no station I know at 1240 in this area. When I switched it off and back on, it was WGIL again, normal, weather report. I can't describe the song now. Only that it seemed familiar in the way that something is familiar before you've encountered it.

Carl goes to the field before dawn every morning. He comes back. He is always back by the time the light comes up fully. He doesn't say what he does there. I don't ask. The schedule feels important. I keep it too, from the kitchen window, watching. I don't know what I am watching for. I think I am watching to make sure he comes back. He always comes back.

Last week I went out with him. Just once. I stood at the fence beside him and I looked at the field and I understood something I am not going to write down here. Not because I am frightened. Because writing it down would make it smaller than it is. Some things are the right size only when they are not described.

Everything that is supposed to be here is here.