Date: 4/17/25 6:02 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 17 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
5:56 a.m. (six minutes before sunrise). Thirty-one degrees, wind
West-northwest, five miles per hour, gusting to twenty-three. Sky dull and
rumpled, a washed-out gray-blue; far from yesterday's molten orange and
red, a lava lamp of color quickly doused. Red maple buds swollen, ready to
burst, a maroon cast across the Hill, wispy but promising. Aspen buds are
ready to burst their sheaths. Beaked hazelnut along the edge of the meadow,
short and skinny-branched shrub in full but subtle glory, dangling
fawn-colored catkins (male or staminate flowers) and tiny, tiny magenta
pistillates (female flowers), alluring petals short and thin like mini
fingers—if the petals were sentences, they'd be *very* concise. Crocuses
are blooming, the lawn a patchwork of random colors. Daffodil flower buds
are swollen, tubular and yellow, and the leaves are straight, green swords,
a Mediterranean spring ephemeral, wild in the woods of southern Europe and
North Africa, analogous to Dutchman's breeches and bloodroot—blooming
before the woods leaf out.
Fresh red oak acorns on the road. Pulverized.
Twenty-seven species of birds, singing, flying, pounding, and provoking.
Robin stalks the lawns and screams in the woods. Crow gabs on the way to
breakfast, black bird against the gray sky. Raven muddled pronouncements, a
larger black bird against the gray sky. Red-shouldered hawk works the wood
frog pools, visions of *des cuisses de grenouille *al fresco*. *Also:
black-capped chickadee; turfted titmouse; red- and white-breasted
nuthatches; pine siskin; house finch; American goldfinch; chipping sparrow;
song sparrow; winter wren; red-winged blackbird; eastern pheobe, guttural
and garbled; barred owl (heard at two in the morning); mourning dove,
conversive wings; Carolina wren; northern cardinal (both sexes singing).
*Department of I Don't Think I Need an Audiologist:* golden-crowned
kinglet, brown creeper, and cedar waxwing.
*Buddy Rich Department: *pileated woodpecker invasive drumming, all
encompassing; downy woodpecker, soft drumming (17 beats per second,
drumroll less than a second); hairy woodpecker, faster and louder than
downy (26 beats per second, drumroll longer than a second); northern
flicker, fast and loud, but not nearly as loud as pileated, (23 beats per
second); yellow-bellied sapsucker, Western Union telegraph, a
stuttering transmission—drumroll, double tap (fast but unevenly spaced),
then fades away. Keeping to himself this morning: red-bellied woodpecker.
