Date: 8/18/25 12:02 pm From: Sue Wetmore <000006207b3956ac-dmarc-request...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 18 August 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Brandon has snakes, northern watersnake, DeKay’s brown snake and garter snakes.
Sue Wetmore
Sent from my iPod
> On Aug 18, 2025, at 3:00 PM, Charlie Teske <cteske140...> wrote:
>
> I've heard others say they've seen no snakes this summer; any theories out there?
>
>
>
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2025 09:06:31 -0400, Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
>
> 5:38 a.m. (nineteen minutes before sunrise). Forty-six degrees (jacket on,
> hands in pockets), wind North five miles per hour, gusting to twelve. Trees
> moan and creak. An October morning in August ... a preview. Crescent moon
> overhead, horns pointed west. In the East, Jupiter and Venus, the only
> other bright spots in an otherwise clear sky, trail the moon, a great
> celestial arc slowly dissolving into daylight.
>
> An altogether refreshing and indelible sunrise. Orange blooms across the
> East, glazes the brooding hills of New Hampshire. One linear cloud below
> the crown of Smarts Mountain. No oppressive humidity. No Canadian wildfire
> smoke. The careless breath on the Arctic crosses Vermont. A passage into
> autumn. A world awash in transition.
>
> Crickets and grasshoppers numbed to silence by the cold. Dragonfly
> migration on hold. No bats this morning. No bees on the hummingbird
> feeders. No hummingbirds, either.
>
> *DOR: *garter snake, a yearling, about a foot long. Only the second I've
> seen all summer.
>
> *Drought Department: *lilac leaves, brittle and blackened. Gray birch
> leaves, yellowing. The first maple leaves blush. Every morning, hose in
> hand, I visit the raised beds and soak the strawberries. I haven't mowed
> the side yard since mid-July. Newly minted wood frog, less than an inch
> long, loiters in the flower bed, where it gets watered every morning.
>
> 5:46 a.m.: gray squirrel skips across Kings Highway. Doesn't look left or
> right, mammal on a mission ... to my sunflower feeders. Great blue heron,
> high over the hill, passing from one river to another, head on shoulders,
> long wings, bowed, voice belches out of the folded pipe of a neck.
>
> A scattered flock of ravens above the treetops, fifteen plus. Birds forged
> in the furnace of early morning: sunlight kindles black feathers, turns
> undersides molten copper. Ravens crabby and conversive—dyspeptic rain falls
> uncontested. Even chickadees remain silent.
>
> 6:25 a.m.: first red-eyed vireo sings, a hesitant rendition of an all
> too familiar song. Longer than usual pauses between phrases. Soon, there'll
> be no phrases, no daylight sonatas. No dueling vireos, voices filling every
> space in the hardwoods.
>
> American goldfinches over a field of goldenrod, yellow above yellow.
>
> *Among the Other Birds: *blue jays harvest green acorns, managing to call
> with mouths full. Black-capped chickadees and tufted titmice. Red and
> white-breasted nuthatches. Dark-eyed juncos flitting everywhere—in the
> woods; across the dirt road; up and down, branch to road ... eye-catching
> tail feathers, bone white. American robins are calling, not singing. Purple
> finch. Northern flicker, a disturbing laugh. Whispering black-and-white
> warbler. Northern cardinal.
>
> 8:43 a.m.: Fifty-four degrees. Torpor over, ruby-throated hummingbird
> visits feeder. Then, another and another, wavelet after wavelet. Half an
> hour later, an upsurge of activity. Chaos at the feeder. The Gulf of Mexico
> looms.
>
