Date: 10/31/25 6:31 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 31 October 2025: Hurricane Hill, WRJ
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.
