Date: 1/14/26 8:46 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 14 January 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Thank you, Pam. If you zip me your email, I'll link you to my *Substack* post
(this was a draft).
On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 9:53 AM Pamela Coleman <
<0000003fbb1e7534-dmarc-request...> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
