Date: 4/23/25 5:59 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 23 April 2025, (day after Earth Day), Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), Hurricane Hill, WRJ
5:24 a.m. (twenty-nine minutes before sunrise). Thirty-six degrees, wind
Northwest four miles per hour, gusting to eleven. An immaculate, cloudless
sky. Crescent moon in the empty southeast. In anticipation of the sun, the
New Hampshire ridgeline glows a warm orange, not too heavy, denser than
sherbet, duller than oriole. The sun rises due east over Moose Mountain,
precisely ninety degrees from where I stand, farther north than in winter,
when it rose out of the gravel works in West Lebanon and tracked directly
above Hurricane Hill. Daffodils open, flowers nod like in subservience to
the rising sun. Red maples, fully flowered. Crowns glow, a warm, subtle
brick-red, not the October knockout blow when the hillsides achieved
chromic density.
*Annals of a Secretive Neighbor:* Silent and hidden by day (I haven't seen
either barred owl since I returned from Colorado, two weeks ago).
Yesterday, Earth Day dueting began at dusk in the evergreens downhill from
my deck—hoots and caterwauls, back and forth. At night, whenever I opened
my eyes, owl pronouncements poured through the open windows; once, so close
I sat up and contemplated tracking them down—serenades end by civil
twilight, leaving me bereft in the mudroom, lacing my sneakers.
5:17 a.m. Juncos and robins take over the airwaves from owls.
5:37 a.m. Chickadees and titmice join in. Six minutes later, phoebe's
rasping vocals roll out of the shed. Then, a short flight for a gray moth.
*Department of Percussionists: *5:52 a.m. sapsucker, disjointed taps and
pileated drumroll, one loud burst, then none, accenting the morning. Hairy,
rapid fire; downy, not so much. Red-bellied and flicker, content to scream.
Ruffed grouse, somewhere in the dim woods, wings aflutter.
Two tongue-tied crows, reticent as rutabagas, pass southeast, low overhead.
Well above the crown of the forest, a solitary raven, slow-motion
wingbeats, makes up for silent crows; a burst of well-spaced
gargling notes, no two quite the same, heads west, black feathers shining.
Hermit thrush and winter wren croon ... solid-gold melodies—the sweetness
of sunrise. I can't get enough of either one.
*And the Background Vocalists:* red- and white-breasted nuthatch;
white-throated, song, chipping, and a lone tree sparrow on its way home to
the Canadian hinterlands (I hope his border-crossing papers are in order);
goldfinch; Carolina wren, screaming; red-winged blackbird; voluble blue
jays, move from tree to tree in pairs, morning's spokesbirds; ruby-crowned
and golden-crowned kinglets; cedar waxwing, pine warbler.
Pond, spring peepers are in charge, which wait in silence for the day to
warm. Newts inhale on wood frog eggs, raw omelets.
Fortunately, wood frogs lay eggs by the thousand, every pond a congestion
of anticipation.
