Date: 5/30/25 5:52 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 30 May 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
4:47 a.m. (twenty-four minutes before sunrise). Beyond the open windows,
robins (4:32 a.m.), like howler monkeys in Costa Rica, assure my place on
the road. Fifty-two degrees, wind South-southwest three miles per hour,
gusting to eight. Not strong enough to hold back mosquitoes, but enough for
aspen leaves to confer among themselves. The sun rises into an
enflamed corner of the sky between Smarts Mountain and Moose Mountain,
lightly rubbled with hints of pink, sixty degrees East-northeast. As the
sun ascends, clouds condense. River fog, thick as whipped cream, disperses,
hiding the northern ridgeline above the White River—Jericho Hill and Dothan
Hill vanish; then rolls up the southern ridgeline, the contours of
Hurricane Hill softening but not erased.
Starflower in bloom. Aspen seeds adrift. The last lilac flowers have spent;
purple fading to brown, but the shrub is still a fortress for catbirds and
northern house wrens, who sing nonstop and loudly, the jazz
set—extemporizing, flourishing, fabricating music out of the moisture.
Two pairs of bald eagles nest in Hartford (I live between them), one on an
island in the Connecticut River, the other along the Ottaquechee in Dewey's
Mill. They'd need infrared goggles to see through the scattering river fog.
Their fishing? Postponed.
A junco on an electric line buzzes, his lower bill keeps pace, vibrating to
the beat. Upper bill, immobile. Turns around and buzzes in the opposite
direction for reasons only the junco knows. Bird on a wire, my dog,
indifferent. I stand directly below, mesmerized. Warm lemon light spreading.
Further uphill, an indigo bunting on the tip of a red spruce sings. Too far
and too steep to pursue. And bunting is too timid to permit a closer
encounter. I watch from a distance, ethereal blue on sunlit green. Dog
zigzags around the road, lost in thought and last night's aromas.
Twenty-eight species of birds, including six warblers (black-throated
green, black-throated blue, black and white, chestnut-sided, yellow, and
common yellowthroat) and two woodpeckers (downy and hairy) on the feeder,
dumping sunflower seeds on the deck. FOY: great-crested flycatchers (at
least four) and eastern wood pewees. I last saw both in Costa Rica, where
they hawked moths along the Caribbean above the bleached remains of a green
sea turtle, a jaguar kill.
As the fog thins, veery sings, its voice spiraling out of the damp woods.
Raven above what's left of Dothan Hill, its husky voice trailing behind ...
the aftermath of visibility.
