Date: 9/30/26 7:40 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 30 September 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:16 a.m., thirty-one minutes before sunrise. Fifty-two degrees, the
north-northwest wind serene at one mile per hour, occasionally sighing to
three. Only the aspen leaves notice, twitching as though someone has given
the tree a gentle shake. Low cloud ceiling. A gaunt mist settles in—much
thinner than river fog, which, when colder, rises thick, white, and
determined to hide the world. Tree crickets murmur beneath it all, their
chorus keeping time with the cool morning air.
How to tell the temperature from the chants of tree crickets: *Dolbear’s
Law, or the **Mathematics of Morning**. *If I didn’t have my iPhone and
felt inclined to calculate—and thereby debase the dawn—I’d have four
formulas to choose from: three for Fahrenheit and one for Celsius.
*Fahrenheit corollaries: *handy in the United States and nineteen tiny
countries—Liberia and Micronesia among them, the others scattered like
crumbs across the Caribbean.
1) Count the chirps in 13 seconds and add 40.
2) Count the chirps in 15 seconds, divide by 4, and add 50.
3) Count the chirps in one minute, subtract 40, divide by 4, and add 50.
And now, the *Celsius corollary*:
4) Count the chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, and add 4.
One suspects Dr. Dolbear, like the rest of us during the pandemic, had a
lot of time on his hands—and crickets on his mind.
Color advances as green retreats, and the season unfolds into an
otherworldly theme park. Here and there, an acorn splashes down. White ash
leaves float and drift; rivulets of yellow ribbon the roadside. Orange
puddles gather around the trunks of solitary sugar maples. Lilacs linger in
green. Woodbine burns red, crimson vines weaving through wet, bright leaves
and crowds of goldenrod.
Asters brighten the dim woods in soft blues and deep purples, here and
there fading to nearly white. Last of the goldenrods, sprigs of yellow.
And, beneath the maples, pale wands of silverrod, two F-stops overexposed
like a bleached transparency.
A catbird whines from the aspen. White-throated sparrows stutter—dark birds
in dim light, just out of sight. Beyond the meadow, a barred owl sends out
a single, drawn-out *hoooo *from its throne in the hemlocks. Then comes a
full-bore outburst, deepening the spell of prolonged twilight.
Three crows head southwest toward the Ottaquechee, black on gray and noisy.
Two others perch in the leafless crown of a maple, conversing. I offer a
comment. The crows bolt. Apparently, my *cawing* needs work. Another flies
low over the road, skimming the orange-and-yellow treetops in restrained
passage.
Blue jays, omnipresent and persistent. Silent most of summer, they have
found their voices again—a fusillade, sharp and piercing, autumn’s unruly
brass section.
An adult red-tailed hawk—the first I’ve seen this season—offers another
sign of autumn on Hurricane Hill. Perhaps it will stay until the snows
come. (Or perhaps it’s merely the first of many passing through.)
Twenty-four species in all, including northern flicker (laughing at a
private joke; undulation above the meadow), hairy woodpecker (feeding),
black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, dark-eyed junco (chirping well
before sunrise), American goldfinch, northern cardinal, eastern towhee
(seasonal pass-through), eastern phoebe (tail in motion), song sparrow,
American robin (dining on highbush craneberries; the first I’ve seen and
heard in more than a week), field sparrow (also passing through), chipping
sparrow, mourning dove, yellow-rumped warbler (ushering me back to the
rolling dunes of Fire Island), golden-crowned kinglet (whispering in the
aspens), cedar waxwing (whispering in the highbush cranberries), and brown
creeper (whispering in the pines).
And the morning’s bonus bird: Lincoln’s sparrow, sulking in the lilac
shadows—brooding, secretive, almost theatrically shy. A little sparrow all
by itself: a glimpse on the ground, another on a blackened lilac limb. Then
gone, as fleeting as the morning sun.
