Date: 6/3/26 6:26 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 03 June 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
4:48 a.m. Twenty-one minutes before sunrise. Forty-three degrees. A
northwest wind at two miles per hour, gusting now and then to three.
Fragmented coral clouds gather in the east; elsewhere, the sky is clear and
bright. Pale lavender seeps westward, then the east turns molten as the sun
lifts over the New Hampshire hills, an epochal flare that lasts only a
moment.
The flowers are keeping their own calendar: Canada mayflower and false
Solomon’s seal. Dandelions and coltsfoot have already gone to seed, their
brief brightness already surrendered to both pollination and the wind.
Still too cold for frogs this morning, though peepers chorused last night
in vernal pools beyond my deck, those small woodland pools kept from the
sun by the kindness of hemlocks.
4:32 a.m. Robins kindled the morning, singing from the roof of the shed,
the crown of the garage, and the maples along the driveway's edge. Then a
hermit thrush called out of the hemlocks where the peepers sleep.
4:44 a.m. Red-breasted nuthatch, somewhere in the shadows, with a small
voice stitched into the dimness.
5:18 a.m. Along the roadside, an eastern wood pewee sings from the end of a
white pine stub, thirty feet up and close to the trunk. Bill barely open,
song shifting, directly above me. A plaintive whistle, rising and falling
... *pee-ah-wee, pee-ah-wee*—as if the bird gives his own name to the
morning. Tail twitching. Wings flicking. A small bundle of motion, perhaps
trying to warm itself. Preening and singing, singing and wing-flicking,
tail bouncing.
Though I saw several pewees in Costa Rica last month, singing from the
almond trees along the Caribbean, I rarely see them at home. They come late
to Vermont and linger deep into summer, often singing straight through the
day. Late May into September. Even the blunt heat of late-summer does not
silence a pewee. I stay until the bird slips away.
5:22 a.m. A northern house wren on the uppermost spruce twig, needles
pointing straight up, singing far beyond its size, as if the whole morning
had been tucked into so small a body.
5:29 a.m. Hairy woodpecker drums. Northern flicker cries out—a volley of
bright blows struck against the morning.
5:37 a.m. Indigo buntings, male and female, side by side in an oak. Silent.
The female hops to the next branch; the male follows dutifully, the two of
them moving through the leaves as if bound by an invisible thread. No
second male making a nuisance of himself. I want to find the nest. The
buntings want privacy. They lead me nowhere in particular. Slow, easy
movements, branch to branch. No feeding. No preening. Only dawdling in the
oak, brushed with buttery light.
r
*Among the chorus, thirty-five species: *mourning dove; eastern phoebe,
from nearly every outbuilding on Kings Highway; red-eyed and blue-headed
vireos; tufted titmouse, loud and insistent; black-capped chickadee;
white-breasted nuthatch; Swainson's thrush; common crow; blue jay; common
raven; and eight warblers, the residents—ovenbird and black-throated green,
both early risers, American redstart, northern parula, northern yellow,
common yellowthroat, pine, chestnut-sided. Gray catbird, as vocally
inventive as ever. Scarlet tanager—no longer a tanager, now a grosbeak.
Northern cardinal. American goldfinch, zipping over the road like stray
bits of sunshine. House finch. Song, chipping, and white-throated sparrows.
Dark-eyed junco.
The morning's mood is encouraging. The bird song and theatrics, thrilling.
As if fine wine were spilling out of the sky. No matter which way the worm
turns, no matter how torqued the nation has become, at the edge of a new
day, across a landscape lush with layered green, I find peace.
