Date: 9/23/26 6:51 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 23 September 2026 (gateway to magnificence, day two: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:15 a.m., twenty-two minutes before sunrise. Thirty-nine degrees (basal
harvest looms in the near future), wind north at four miles per hour,
gusting to six. The hill wrapped in rising river fog. Visibility less than
one hundred yards. Fog, condensing and rinsing, leaves drip. Sounds like
rain. Feels like rain. The sun rises (somewhere above the New Hampshire
ridgeline), an accelerant to the morning's ambiguity. Fog brightens.
Crickets murmur, a soft undercurrent. The wet, droopy meadow's score.
In the lilacs, shadows whisper, a sparrow jubilee. Seven species. Mostly
white-throated. Small silhouettes stipple the dark branches. One swamp
sparrow. One savannah sparrow. White-crowned sparrows (three days running)
passing through from the density of Canada. Chipping sparrows and song
sparrows, summer holdovers (for now). Dark-eyed juncos on the ground,
foraging.
A northern flicker, headed south, screams. It's white rump flashes through
the fog. Gray catbird, emperor of lilac, supervises restless sparrows. But
has nothing to say. Yet keeps its counsel. Stymied by the fog, summer
scatting a distant memory.
*Among the Others:* Golden-crowned kinglet and brown creeper in the pines,
barely audible. American goldfinches, now the brightest birds in the
meadow, everywhere and chattering. Northern cardinal. Black-capped
chickadees and tufted titmice. Both nuthatches, red-breasted and
white-breasted, calling in the pines. The shrill of blue jays, much more
vocal than in summer. American crows and a lone common raven, high above
the hillside, somewhere beyond the fog, avian foghorns.
*Bonus Birds: *Swainson's thrush, emphatic, piercing call notes ... *whit,
whit, whit*. Yesterday afternoon, the flight calls above my house reminded
me of tree frogs, peepers on the wing. Myrtle warblers in the aspens. Palm
warbler on the ground, bobbing tail, the morning's metronome. Least
flycatcher ... *pit, pit, pit.*
*On the Rodent Frontline: *Between the lower granite slabs of the steps is
a narrow gap, an inch or two, no more. In summer, a large garter snake
wedges itself in the seam, two or three coils soaking in the late-afternoon
sun. By dusk, the gap becomes a passageway for white-footed mice bound for
the back deck and the bounty of sunflower seeds. Mice take the evening
shift; chipmunks, the daylight hours. Gray and red squirrels keep the seeds
falling in a steady, extravagant spill. (Juncos profit, too.)
Yesterday, a southern red-backed vole darted into the space between the
stones—gray-brown and hamster-like, with a chestnut saddle and bright,
dark, beady eyes. A mouse of the forest floor, it forages through the leaf
litter for succulent vegetation, berries, insect larvae, and snails. I have
never seen one scavenging sunflower seeds on the deck. In fact, I hadn't
seen a red-backed vole in several years—not since the neighborhood
barred owl plucked one from the roadside gully and carried it to a
transformer box on a nearby pole. One swallowed. One blinked.
C. Hart Merriam, the American naturalist and ethnographer, claimed
that *the flesh
of the red-backed mouse is tender and well-flavored. *Only the barred owl
knows—and keeps its counsel.
