Date: 4/21/25 7:57 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 20 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Thank you, Sandy.
On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 10:25 AM Sandy Turner <tmsprgrn...> wrote:
> 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.
> >
>
