Date: 9/24/25 6:05 am
From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...>
Subject: [VTBIRD] 24 September 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:24 a.m. (fifteen minutes before sunrise). Sixty degrees, overcast and
misty. A dust-dampening drizzle. Wind Northwest three miles per hour,
gusting to ten. Crickets and owls slowly cede night to whomever is up
besides me.

Lawn and roadside littered with leaves, mostly white ash and red maple.
There's an off-color transition in the woods, triggered by the summer-long
drought. Green to brown. Yellow to brown. Brown to brittle. Underfoot,
leaves more swishing than crinching.

Although it rained lightly and intermittently yesterday, the ground remains
dry, a half an inch down—but the mint I planted along the road perked up,
with dark green leaves cocktail-ready. (Of course, mint is hardy enough to
perk up with car exhaust.)

4:45 a.m. A pair of barred owls converse in the woods below the deck.
Hollow phrases roll out of the dark and through open windows. It's warm
enough to stand outside in skivvies and listen; too wet to sit in outdoor
furniture. One owl perches close to the meadow, less than a hundred feet
from the deck—the other, deep inside the two-dimensional gloom. An
alternating discourse. *Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you allllll? *(The
familiar, always-ignored question.) The second bird repeats the phrase. A
perfect, faint echo. Back and forth, nocturnal repetitions on the cusp of
dawn—and, for me, there's no going back to sleep. Owls end their dialogue
at 4:56 a.m. Resume at 5:15 a.m. End, again, at 5:26 a.m., having come to
some resolution ... or fallen asleep.

Dark-eyed juncos twitter around the dooryard (6:25 a.m.). Ravens call from
the pines (6:37 a.m.).

Three deer in the brushhogged meadow, one doe and two grown fawns (spotless
and dark gray-brown). Browsing cut grasses and forbs. See me on the deck
and pause. Deer bound to the far side of the meadow, semaphore tails
up—fallen leaves, which baste the ground, silence footfalls.

Feeder activity begins after 7:30 a.m. First chickadees. Then, red-breasted
nuthatches. Gray squirrels appear by 8:00 a.m.
Immediately, chased away (hopefully, no one was listening). Beyond the
deck, morning does assemble on an oak limb, 8:46 a.m.—apparently, in no
hurry to feed.

 
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