Date: 9/19/25 6:32 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 19 September 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:27 a.m. (six minutes before sunrise). Fifty-nine degrees, wind
Northwest five miles per hour gusting to sixteen (decent conditions to fly
south). Sky (for the moment) blocky and bruised. Then, clouds brighten by
degrees, gilded along the margins —the allure of
sunrise—eventually dissipating. From clear to clotted: flotillas out of the
northwest drift overhead, morph to monster cottonballs, a steady scud like
morning traffic in a school parking lot. Treetops agitated.
Leaves falling, begin to gather along the roadside. Brittle gutters. Sugar
maple, red maple, white ash, a faded expression of autumn, whithering green
to burnt yellow and orange. Even a few red oak leaves litter the road. The
vibrancy of autumn? Colored by drought. A conspiracy of the season.
The murmur of crickets.
Woodland asters ... a partial color wheel—blue and white and purple.
Punctuated by the brilliance of New England aster, the very essence of
purple.
Just after five in the morning, a barred owl called from the front yard,
beyond the pergola. Rolling hoots woke me up. Still in bed, I tracked its
movements uphill, hoot by hoot, below the canopy. Until reduced to a
whisper.
American goldfinches, their colors fading like the leaves, mob feeders.
Below them are dark-eyed juncos. Hummingbirds? Apparently gone—I haven't
seen one in the two days I'm home from Colorado (even though vine
honeysuckles and fuschias remain heavily flowered).
Chickadees and titmice stick to the woods, cardinals and morning doves the
meadow. Overhead, jays and crows and ravens. All vocal. Calling jays, slice
and pierce. White-throated sparrows have arrived; chipping sparrows are
still around; savannah sparrows pass through. Lone blue-headed vireo.
Ovenbirds and red-eyed vireos, summer's virtuosos, moved out. Not a wren.
Not a catbird. Not a pewee, nor a phoebe.
Black-throated green warbler scrutinizes the undersides of delicate leaves
(probing too hard might cause the leaf to fall off). Palm warbler, tail
bobbing, advances along the roadside.
*A Report From the Not-So-Distant Past: *Yesterday, mid-afternoon, an adult
bald eagle above the driveway. Several hundred feet high. Cruising in wide,
mishapened circles. Around and around and around. Apparently, in no hurry.
A red-shouldered hawk, drawn to the eagle like iron to a magnet, became a
temporary, pestering presence. Dive-bombing. Three, four, five stoops, then
headed south toward the Carolinas ... the eagle still circling (or, more
precisely, ovaling).
