Date: 7/9/26 6:19 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 09 July 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
At 4:37 a.m., with the bedroom windows open, an American robin alarm
sounded forty minutes before the sun. I rose reluctantly, still held in the
heavy sway of jet lag from a journey that took me through Juneau,
Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, Icy Point, Anchorage, and the Olympic Peninsula.
Whether from the decks of the Silver Moon along the Inland Passage, the Hoh
Rainforest, in Olympic National Park, or here in the Vermont dawn, these
birds have remained a constant chorus on either side of North America.
The morning is sixty-three degrees with a gentle southern wind. To the
northeast, thin blue-gray clouds merge with the ridgeline, leaving Mount
Cube and Moosilaukee lost in a meteorological bruising. As a bright quarter
moon tips southward, the thick fog haunting the White and Connecticut
rivers vanishes, receding much like the Mendenhall Glacier I recently
witnessed. (Wolves and black bears patrol beneath a forest of Sitka spruce
and emerging western hemlock that, fifty years ago, was a river of receding
ice.)
Now, the colors of sunrise bloom over Smarts Mountain in a blend of pale
pink and orange.
In the uncut meadows, vetch, yarrow, and oxeye daisy are alive with
goldfinches. After nearly a month in the Pacific Northwest, I left my bird
feeders idle; once refilled, the sunflower-bright goldfinches returned
within the hour, followed by chickadees and blue jays the next day. While
the robins begin their third clutch, the goldfinches have yet to nest and
wander meadow to meadow harvesting seeds.
The morning procession unfolds in steady increments:
- 4:59 a.m.: Red-eyed vireos and tufted titmice joined the robins.
- 5:03 a.m.: An American crow called out, its pitch distinct from its
Alaskan cousins. Birds, like people, carry regional accents.
- 5:12 a.m.The acoustical floodgates opened with veeries, indigo
buntings, song sparrows, and the inventive and nonstop song of the grey
catbird.
- 5:17 a.m.: Rose-breasted grosbeak, sweet as ever.
- 5:21 a.m.: Northern cardinal.
- 5:28 a.m.: Chestnut-sided warbler and chipping sparrow
- 5:31 a.m.: A great crested flycatcher and a northern yellow warbler
offered a study in contrast—one gruff, the other sweet.
- 5:35 a.m.: On the top of Hurricane Hill, the pine warbler still sings
(louder and less musical than I recall).
The yellow-bellied sapsuckers had fledged while I was away, leaving behind
a pair of cavities in the aspen that marked their 2025 and 2026 nesting
efforts. Part of the sapsucker superspecies three-pack, red-breasteds of
the temperate rainforest, neon-bright, as yellow-bellieds dipped into
cabernet, were just beginning to nest; our local yellow-bellieds have left
an aspen tree to the elements, to become softer and even easier to excavate
next spring (if it doesn't fall).
- 5:44 a.m.: northern parula warbler and eastern wood pewee join the
chorus.
- 5:45 a.m., a brown creeper wanders up a nearby pine trunk, its song a
mere whisper as the day began in earnest.
Eventually, a broad-winged hawk, pileated woodpecker, mourning dove, common
raven, red-bellied woodpecker, common grackle, cedar waxwing, eastern
bluebird, Baltimore oriole, house finch, red-winged blackbird, scarlet
tanager, blue jay, dark-eyed junco, and both nuthatches, red- and
white-breasted. Thirty-seven species in all.
Sunlight makes the maple canopy gleam, backlit as I pause underneath,
sunshine oozing down the trunk. Living green. Makes oxygen, sequesters
carbon, and is gorgeous ... what more could you want on a cool July morning?
