Date: 1/26/25 6:55 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 26 January 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
7:09 a.m. (two minutes before sunrise). Fourteen degrees, wind South five
miles per hour, gusting to thirteen. Sky: categorically dull, blue-gray
overcast, with a slight blush—heaven chilled like a cold cheek.
Crows crisscrossing the sky quietly, into and out of the wind. Don't their
eyes tear up in the breeze? On the far side of the hill, raven asserts
itself on a cold morning, guttural and garrulous—a bird of conviction
communing with the wind.
Mourning doves, talkative feathers, a slurred whistle. Goldfinch, hidden in
the bushes, calls. A roving flock of robins passes over the hill, from one
river valley to the next—an endless search for withered fruit.
Barred owl on a horizontal red maple branch, framed by the trunk, a
brown-streaked, grayish bird in front of a gray-streaked trunk. Until the
owl spins its head, I mistake it for a patch of lichen, albeit a
cartoonish owl patch. Stares at bird feeders. Squirrels conspicuous by
their absence.
Department of Hope: pileated setting up territory, drums somewhere in the
tower of oaks. Primes daybreak, loud, resonant, repetitive. Hammers life
into the bright, shadowless morning. Hairy woodpecker announces his
presence, drums in a roadside sugar maple—soft counterpoint to pileated.
Chickadees, titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches singing. Not
persistently... just enough to remind me Earth turns on its axis and no
winter lasts forever.
