Date: 12/18/25 6:34 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 18 December 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:42 a.m. (thirty-six minutes before sunrise). Twenty-two degrees, wind
South-southeast three miles per hour, gusting to six. A clear, lavender sky
grading to lemon. Pink along the rim of New Hampshire. Color more pastel
than solid ... a watercolor sunrise. Clouds condense as I watch, taking on
the chromatic burden of sunrise, mostly pinkish. Even the snow blushes,
delicately pink ... for a moment.
Trace river fog, thin as hope, streaks the northern hills. Dragons breath,
condensing where the rivers meet into lean, off-white cotton, dispersing as
the sun rises.
6:56 a.m. doves in flight, wings in conversation. No sign of the birds.
6:59 a.m. hidden but noisy, goldfinch and crows sound off.
7:02 a.m. five crows—three and two—commute northwest above the White River
and below the transmuting sky.
Preceded by its voice, a pileated flies above the contours of the Hill.
Pointed at both ends. Bicolored wings flicking. Rising and sinking above a
phalanx of trees, a million naked branches and somber green skirts. Off to
dismember a tree, prospecting for carpenter ants.
Titmice and chickadees hide sunflower seeds under the peeling bark of a
crabapple, inside old sapsucker holes, which ring the tree crown to base
and along the thick limbs. No seed is safe. Lots of stealing. To avoid the
pirates, a few titmice fly across the driveway, try their luck in a stand
of aspen. Then, there's a steady pulse of birds from feeder, to crabapple,
to aspens. Perhaps, beyond to the broad-branched oaks on the far side of
the road, with their welcoming bark, deeply fissured.
Blue jays bury seeds well away from the feeder (sometimes in the garden).
Chickadees, nuthatches, and titmice stay in the immediate neighborhood—the
pathologically restless—hiding and raiding, day after day. Back and forth.
Each other's unintended benefactor. The generosity of omniscient
kleptomania.
Two chickadees sing, which makes a difference (to me). Embrace the song,
like paperwhites in the kitchen, during these darkest of days.
