Date: 2/4/26 6:41 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 04 February 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:42 a.m. (twenty minutes before sunrise). Fourteen (balmy) degrees, beyond
the cold wall of unforgiving weather. Wind West-southwest three miles per
hour, gusting to six. Flurries, an anemic of snowfall, microflakes,
drifting like dust, aimless and arbitrary. On again. Off again. In the
east, a subtle haze, purple grades to peach, then to pewter. In the west,
the waning moon slides behind a thin screen of clouds.
6:50 a.m.: A fuss of goldfinches emerges from roadside spruce and backyard
cedar. Noisy.
6:57 a.m.: Chickadees singing, first one, then another. I stand in the
middle of a stereophonic echo, saluting the *new *day. For years, the
merlin had been my totem. Now, gliding through my seventies, I hitch my
star to chickadees, the solemn glory of birds that sing in winter, that
remind me that the days are getting longer and brighter (if not warmer). I
embrace the moment, pedestrian as a snowflake, but a gift (nonetheless)
that gives morning after morning—the impregnable voice of a bird that
weighs no more than a Number-2 pencil. I embrace chickadees, emblems of
Ansel Adams' Zone System: black, white, and middle-tone gray. In their
case, *ordinary* and *plain* are synonymous with joyous. They've got my
attention. My devotion.
7:06 a.m.: two crows, one half-hearted *caw*. Headed northwest.
A smattering of white-breasted nuthatches calling out of sight from behind
the dark, green veil.
Doves scramble across the morning, wings conversing.
*Department of Presumed Intent: *Yesterday, mid-afternoon, deep snow lured
a barred owl into the maple behind my deck. Perched on a horizontal limb,
eyes closed. Brownish gray and football-shaped. Luxuriating in sunlight.
Below the deck is a thoroughfare where red squirrels cross the meadow,
porpoising through two feet of powder or navigating tunnels below the
surface. Now and again, a squirrel pops up, a reddish Jack-in-the-Box in
unblemished white. I imagine, tuned to the squirrels, the owl had launched,
wings arced, gliding like a shadow, then plunged—punctuations on the
surface and feather prints where the great wings had slapped. I'd give
short odds that the owl, gorged on squirrel, was digesting in sunlight,
then slipped into an afternoon nap ... I can relate.
