Date: 11/20/25 5:50 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 20 November 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:33 a.m. (seventeen minutes before sunrise). Sixteen degrees, wind
West-northwest two miles per hour, gusting to three (noticeable only to the
few stubborn beech leaves still fixed to twigs). The sky lightens, night
foreclosed. A pastel palette of lavender and rose across the east. Hemlock
shadows wane, an owl barks.
Ambiguous mositure—Clouds? River fog?—like waves lap the shores of the New
Hampshire hills ... narrow and mercurial.
6:36 a.m. Driveway ensemble: golden-crowned kinglets (whispering),
black-capped chickadees (reiteratively calling), red-breasted nuthatches
(tricycle-horn toots), and American goldfinches (airborne stammering).
Three chickadees explore the textured bark of a crabapple, an ample tree
whose thick, angular limbs run parallel to ground. Whatever the birds'
breakfast, it isn't big enough for me to see, let alone identify.
6:44 a.m. An excessively chatty crow, caws with abiding certainty. Alone
and headed northwest ... toward Ottauquechee River and Deweys Pond, where
mist rises like dancing ponies.
Barred owl signs off. Red-tailed hawk signs on. High in the crown of the
tallest white pine. A long-distant scream. Trails off then builds up. On
and off like a soundtrack from *Rawhide* or some other 1960s western (a
spellbinding scream often and wrongly attributed to a golden eagle). Then,
redtail bolts pine. Deep, slow flaps (still shrieking). Out of a shadow,
over the road, over the hill, into sunshine, trailing its voice behind. The
dynastic authority of a seasonal visitor ... here until snow buries the
meadows.
Taking a cue from the silence of the owl and the jurisdiction of the hawk,
a raccoon waddles down the road. Heads into the woods. Silent like smoke.
Fourteen mourning doves whir overhead, flapping like their wings are on
fire. The birth of another day.
