Date: 4/21/25 7:26 am From: Sandy Turner <tmsprgrn...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 20 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Dear Ted, It is such a joy for housebound birders to read your posts.
Thank you.
Sandy and Mark Turner
Lyman, NH
On Sun, Apr 20, 2025 at 8:39 AM Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
> 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.
>
