Date: 1/14/26 6:53 am From: Pamela Coleman <0000003fbb1e7534-dmarc-request...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 14 January 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your poetically written posts Ted! I almost feel like I was there. :-) Pam
On Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at 09:35:54 AM EST, Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
5:57 a.m. (one hour and twenty-three minutes before sunrise). Twenty-six
degrees, wind South four miles per hour, gusting to twelve. Coal black and
overcast. A world in silence—owls silent as rabbits—the only sound, my
micro-spiked footfalls through the brittle icy road. Lights flicker across
the valley, along the Dothan Hill ridgeline above the White River.
Intermittent streams purl beneath bridges of snow, a soft, hollow melody
that gains prominence whenever the streams emerge from their tunnel, out of
the woods, and across the meadow.
Last night, spike-footed deer poked holes in crusted snow.
7:07 a.m. Lone crow caws from a roadside aspen. Perched in the crown, fixed
to spindly branches. Watches me watch him, up and down with each caw, body,
head to tail, stretched at a forty-five-degree angle.
7:13 a.m. Chickadee singing. I can't help but pause.
7:16 a.m. As I pass beneath the crow, twenty-seven others, a black
ruckus headed northwest over the meadow, commandeering the airwaves. Crow
in aspen bolts, follows the crowd, leagued together nosily black
against the dull sky—en route to Quechee—breakfast in Deweys Pond (perhaps).
7:18 a.m. Pileated draws attention to himself. Flies northeast over the
meadowed shoulder of Hurricane Hill, calling, wings flashing white. Rises
on the upstroke. Sinks on the down stroke. Undulating across the valley.
Lands in maple. Wanders around the trunk. Finding the tree wanting,
the woodpecker departs into the density of the evergreens.
7:23 a.m. up on the early side, a graceful gray squirrel flows branch to
branch, tree to tree, over the road, and to a backyard feeder.
*On the Quiet Side:* Cedar waxings (on crapapples) and golden-crowned
kinglets (hovering by maple twigs and hemlock sprigs). Brown creeper
singing, first I've heard or seen in more than a month. And, at 7:44 a.m.,
the *big* surprise ... pine grosbeak, a far-off, descending whistle.
Seven doves hurtling toward a feeding station. One jay, from the tip of a
pine, supervises the rising sun, which sneaks into a sluggish sky.
*On the Deck: *Goldfinches, chickadees, juncos, titmice, and both species
of nuthatches are all over the feeders, then disperse, driven by a frenetic
red squirrel, which mechanically darts all over the deck.
