Date: 7/23/26 7:23 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 23 July 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
4:47 a.m. (forty-five minutes before sunrise). Fifty-one degrees, with a
west wind at two miles per hour, gusting to five—calm compared with last
evening, when the wind snapped branches and heart-rotted trees. Robins
singing on the pergola at 4:37 a.m.
Clear overhead. Lightly striated in the east and north. A small cloud
clings to the horizon in the valley between Smarts Mountain and Mount Cube.
Another, a cottony puff, drifts above the mouth of the White River.
Then, as the sun rises above Moose Mountain, the east gleams like polished
gunmetal. Light at first, then deepening to a metallic gray-purple—an
evanescent wash that vanishes in moments.
Sprays of goldenrod, the first hint that summer is not eternal, color the
edge of the road and the uncut meadow with yellow.
5:04 a.m. red-eyed vireos join robins, singing nonstop in the maples, the
oaks, the hemlocks.
5:08 a.m. front-lawn chipping sparrows join in and a hermit thrush, hidden
in the hemlock shadows.
5:10 a.m. lone crow across an empty sky, calling
5:12 a.m. goldfinch—many, many—back and forth above the meadow. Song
sparrow in the meadow. Both singing, full-throated.
Ten minutes later, an indigo bunting on an electric line, so intensely blue
I have to stop and stare.
5:26 a.m., just as the sun crests Moose Mountain, a pheobe decides to sing.
Joined by a wood thrush and an eastern towhee. Then, within moments, a blue
jay, first of many, and a titmouse, also first of many.
Red-eyed vireo singing on one side of the road, blue-headed vireo on the
other. Stereophonic music (like my college apartment) except one speaker
broke ... the red-eyed is louder and faster, a ceaseless babble—a terminal
outpouring. Blue-headed, more dignified, pauses, considers. Leaves me
wanting more, not less.
Total: twenty-nine species. Scarlet tanager, tree-top level, over the road;
common yellowthroat; swamp sparrow; house sparrow; house finch.
*At home:* two rose-breasted grosbeak families—males, females, and grown
chicks, two each. A summer highlight. The comings and goings of
hummingbirds at all three feeders and the vine honeysuckle that climbs the
pergola, bearing dozens of clusters of red, trumpet-shaped flowers.
The juncos fledged four chicks from the potted plant hanging from the
pergola, which, for several weeks, made watering a careful dance.
*Yesterday's pre-dawn encounter: *I see an adolescent bear standing in the
road, like a Newfoundland—dark, shaggy, and immense. We stare at each other
in the gray light. I keep walking. The bear keeps standing, staring. Tiny
eyes in a big head, owl in reverse. Dim light. A pregnant moment. Then the
bear turns and steps into the woods, walking back and forth, flat-footed
and noisy, before disappearing into the shadows. I hear it, but can no
longer see it. I stand for long moments, peering into the dark.
I think of my bird feeders filled to the brim, my raspberry vines bent with
fruit, my moldering compost. Should I continue to walk or go home? Defend
my deck with a maniacal cry and bluff charge like a log on a leash? The
morning slowly uncurls. Farther up the road, the bear crosses, sauntering
down the bank and into a meadow, through daisies and goldenrod, in no
particular hurry. Then it stops and looks back at me, like a driver
checking the mirror, though far more flexible. We consider each other again.
Bear heads downhill. I head home to breakfast on the deck. In the company
of squirrels.
