Date: 10/31/25 8:17 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 31 October 2025: Hurricane Hill, WRJ
Would love it, Rachel. Give me a call.
On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 11:09 AM rachel west <rjwest68...> wrote:
> ted, I loved this "walk thru the woods" with you today!
>
> thank you!
>
> I would love to join you on a morning walk one of these days, if you are
> open to company.
>
> rachel
>
> On Fri, Oct 31, 2025, 9:30 AM Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
>
> > 6:58 a.m. (twenty-six minutes before sunrise, the second latest sunrise
> of
> > the year—tomorrow's the latest.) Forty-eight degrees, overcast and
> pouring
> > rain. Umbrella in hand, binoculars zipped inside my raincoat, dog home
> and
> > warm, I trudge uphill under the spell of rain—the rat-a-tat-tatting—the
> > rhythm above my head. No highlights. The banks and skyline across both
> > rivers, gone. Erased by moisture—mist, fog, rain. The summit of Hurricane
> > Hill? Reduced to a suggestion, an overexposed black and white print.
> >
> > Birdless landscape (at the moment), so I focus on the elbow of a twig, a
> > kink in an otherwise horizontal maple, where a raindrop swells, sags,
> then
> > lets go like the bottom falling out of an overstuffed grocery bag. Only
> the
> > shell of the drop remains. One witness is enough ... I move on.
> >
> > The sun, hidden behind rain clouds, brightens the eastern sky, the
> frosted
> > lightbulb effect. (You know it's up there. You can't see it. But the
> world
> > lightens by baby steps.)
> >
> > 7:34 a.m. seventeen crows fly through the gloom, northwest, quiet and,
> > perhaps, contemplative.
> > 7:39 a.m. lone raven barks, first avian utterance of the morning.
> > 7:46 a.m. three mourning doves fly across the road and settle into a
> > leafless maple on the edge of a meadow. Noisy flight draws my attention,
> > 7:58 a.m. pileated laughs (a private joke?), then flies across the road.
> A
> > sharp bird, pointed at all for ends, blinker wings flashing.
> >
> > Robins and a single bluebird strip (well-rinsed) winterberries off a
> > roadside shrub. Juncos and white-throated sparrows in the meadow,
> > dispersing raindrops, gathering seeds. One white-crowned sparrow,
> abundant
> > along the Colorado River, a rare visitor to Hurricane Hill. Of course,
> I've
> > never seen a white-throated sparrow in sage and rabbitbrush.
> >
> > Myrtle (yellow-rumped) warblers and golden-crowned kinglets drift through
> > an aspen, inspecting the crotches and tips of twigs, the last remaining
> > leaves, sunbeam yellow. Kinglets hover. Warblers flit.
> >
> > Back home by eight o'clock, chickadees, titmice, and both nuthatches busy
> > themselves on the feeders and in the woods, back and forth storing
> > sunflowers amid the raindrops. One soaked gray squirrel.
> >
>
