Date: 10/14/26 6:53 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 14 October 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:39 a.m. (twenty-three minutes before sunrise). Fifty-three degrees, with
a south-southeast wind at one mile per hour, rising to three ... barely a
whisper. Dark. Misty. Walking through a low-hanging cloud. Visibility: a
hundred yards, perhaps less. A dawn reminiscent of Dartmoor (fortunately,
the hounds are elsewhere).
River fog is denser, more like whipped cream, and spills uphill. This fog
is thinner, close to drizzle, couldn't support a dream, and drifts down
from above. Shortly after sunrise, fog begins to lift. Pockets of sunlight
and clear blue sky open and close—a heavenly kaleidoscope.
September’s lusty tree cricket serenade has softened to a murmur, the
soundtrack of mid-October, threaded through with the unbroken chipping of
sparrows. The fall foliage, still gorgeous, has slipped beyond peak.
Beneath roadside maples lie puddles of red and yellow. Aspens hold fast to
most of their leaves, a mingling of butter yellow and green. Oaks fade from
green to reddish brown, with hints of yellow.
Lilac leaves blacken, a bacterial blight. Brittle and less-than-cheerful.
Out of sync with the season: four oxeye daisies in flower amid a field of
withered goldenrods, adhering to the calendar.
Four crows wing southwest in silence, more gray than black in the fog. They
seem to know exactly where they’re going. Their transparent third
eyelid—the *nictitating membrane*—must be working overtime, sweeping across
their eyes like windshield wipers on a rainy night.
White-throated sparrows are everywhere. Flocks upon flocks upon flocks.
They chip in the shadows, hop along the road, dart between bushes, and toss
leaves aside in a tireless search for seeds. Most call. Some sing
pared-down versions of their spring song. In a weedy corner of the hill,
where grapevines thread through pole-sized aspens and honeysuckle, a
white-throated sparrow preens. High-speed hygiene. A thousand feathers,
perhaps more. One contour feather at a time—mostly from beneath the
wings—passes between its beak, a whirlwind of cleanliness. Barbs and
barbules are instantly, methodically realigned. Earth’s original Velcro.
*Among the others: *American robin—many, many, and calling; hermit thrush
and winter wren, both sadly restrained; ruby-crowned and golden-crowned
kinglets hovering together at the tips of hemlock twigs; white-breasted
nuthatch; black-capped chickadee; tufted titmouse; and northern cardinal, a
bright petal on a dark bough. The sparrows: song, chipping, swamp,
Lincoln’s, and dark-eyed junco. Yellow-rumped warblers comb the late-season
leaves—still mostly green and yellow—for late-season caterpillars.
*Inside the vanishing mist, high *on the main trunk of a shedding maple, a
male pileated excavates carpenter ants—not so much a pound as a peck, then
a tap. Chips of maple rain down. Against the trunk: black and white, crest
erect, red as an apple.
