Date: 3/30/26 6:07 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 30 March 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:23 a.m. (eleven minutes before sunrise). Thirty-nine degrees, wind from
the south at four miles per hour, gusting to eleven. A lone, ambitious, and
steadfast robin in a maple beyond the outbuildings sings without pause,
eyeing the shed shelves and the idle dog pen, where disheveled nests mark
time like old calendars. A relentless serenade with the sun still well
below the New Hampshire skyline. No other robins sing, though a few call
from the edge of the hemlocks, sharp and repetitious, stuck in the shadows,
waiting for their chance.
The sky is an overcast, untextured blue-gray, slowly brightening. Baby
steps. A faint pink in the east is swallowed back into the colorless seam
between night and day. Squandered. The sun arrives without announcement.
Knuckles of maple buds swell—a kind of seasonal arthritis—rounder, fuller
with each passing day.
6:34 a.m. A crow flies southeast, laboring into the wind—a slow-motion
journey above a landscape just waking up.
6:36 a.m. A song sparrow in a tangle of briers stands boldly upright, bill
to the sky, calling ... *tick, tick, tick*. Just slow enough not to become
a trill.
The sunrise gangs of crows have scattered. Couples slip out of last week's
crowds. One pair calls and chases, filling the air with devotion, then
lands on a limb facing each other. Another, a cockamamie pest, harries
the couple, calling, chasing, landing on nearby limbs, until finally,
perspective reset, he's chased away.
6:55 a.m. Mid-meadow maple. Bell-toned notes of a blue jay ring out, its
head thrown back, crest erect.
*A Constellation of Birds: *a male northern cardinal, an ornament in a
grapevine; American tree sparrow; black-capped chickadee (of course);
tufted titmouse (also, of course); winter wren, a tireless singer;
golden-crowned kinglet (an ornithological hearing test); red- and
white-breasted nuthatches; pine siskin; American goldfinch (a cloud);
common raven, wings flat, sailing the firmament; downy woodpecker drumming
like impatient fingers on my desk.
