Date: 4/20/25 5:39 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 20 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
5:46 a.m. (twelve minutes before sunrise). Forty-four degrees, wind
Northwest fifteen miles per hour, gusting to thirty-three, speaking in
Tongues. Limbs and branches wave, hemlock shirts flutter, up and down,
sideways—a woodland shimmy—a noisy morning—silences runoff streams. The sky
has a thousand faces: somber in the southeast, bruised clouds
magenta-trimmed; the half-moon, polished, alone in the south; across the
northeast, a run of low, dark clouds like a mountain range rife with
alpenglow. And in the northwest, big clouds drift obliquely across a sea of
blue.
*Annals of the pond*: wood frogs, dispersed. Peepers, hushed and below the
surface. Mallards and red-shouldered hawk have moved on.
Coltsfoot in flower along the hem of the road. Red maple buds opened
yesterday (in the seventies), flowers await bumblebees, while the hillside
sports color ... decidedly redder than yesterday. Aspen catkins on the
ground, three inches long and fuzzy like a bunch of gray-green
caterpillars; pollen in the air (and for me, another seasonal congestion).
*Dead on the Road (DOR)*: an earthworm caught and dried in yesterday's
*very *warm rain.
5:41 a.m. Barred owl calling from the woods below my house, where the
meadow narrows and gives way to brooding evergreens. Like a boy lured by
the bells of an ice cream truck, I follow the sound and search dim woods
for a dimly colored bird ... like staring into dark water for the shadow of
a fish. My takeaway: The barred owl lives in the neighborhood, though
*much *more secretive than *they* (I'm not sure of the owl's pronoun;
although I've taken to calling him/her George) were in winter, when bird
feeders lured incautious and snow-floundered red squirrels out of the woods
and across the meadow.
5:51 a.m. titmouse, chickadee, and golden-crowned kinglets singing, all
close by.
5:57 a.m. turkey vulture, not known to be an early riser (like my boys when
they were young), tacks northwest, flapless and gliding, primary flight
feathers teasing the wind.
*Among the birds (thirty-one species):* annoyed robins, nest under
construction in a lilac, chip as I walk by. Winter wrens and hermit
thrushes enrich the sunrise, Joan Baez and Judy Collins with
feathers, soothing the morning. Northern flicker. Pileated. Red-bellied
woodpecker. Hairy and downy woodpeckers. Yellow-bellied sapsucker.
Sparrows—song, chipping, white-throated, dark-eyed junco. American
goldfinch. Northern cardinal. Raven and crows in the air. Blue jays in the
trees are loquacious, mimic everything but the wind. Cedar waxwing, a
disjointed flock, fights the wind to stay together. Broad-winged hawk
(FOY), whistles. Eastern phoebes patrol dooryards, one home after another.
Brown cowbird, squeaky in the pines, poor reputation for a bird that can't
help itself. Red- and white-breasted nuthatches. Mourning dove.
A small flock of three ruby-crowned kinglets dances around the end of ash
twigs, wings flicking. Tiny bundles of energy, head aflame—red crown
pronounced—a speck of brilliance.
Try as I might, I neither see nor hear a warbler or vireo. Blue-throated
vireos and pine and myrtle warblers are late to the party on Hurricane
Hill.
