Date: 10/21/26 6:40 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 21 October 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:52 a.m. (nineteen minutes before sunrise). Thirty degrees. Wind from the
north-northwest at two miles per hour, with occasional four-mile-per-hour
gusts that only the dangling aspen leaves seem to notice. No river fog. No
clouds. Every hill and long, rolling ridgeline etched sharply against the
blue—a precise rendering of the landscape, as though drawn on a drafting
table. No sign of snow on Moosilaukee. A crisp October morning, made for
gloves and a ski cap, its stillness broken only by restless crows and the
lonely call of a pileated deep in the dark hemlocks. Crickets silenced by
cold.
As the sun rises, frost gleams across the pastures above the White River. A
hill-hugging wash of pastel orange emerges in the north, brushing the long
woods before fading like a shooting star. If the sky remains clear and
black late tonight, the Orionid meteor shower—the detritus of Halley’s
Comet—will streak by. At forty-one miles per second, lines of light score
the darkness as dust particles flare and vanish in Earth’s atmosphere. Will
southbound geese notice?
A woodcock, pointed at both ends, erupts from beneath the lilacs. Hard
flapping. Low to the ground. Vanishes into the meadow. Swallowed by nodding
goldrods gray as dusk.
*Among the other birds:* mourning doves winging from the chatty aspens to a
neighbor’s feeder; a common raven broadcasting from the far side of the
hill; black-capped chickadee; golden-crowned kinglet; tufted titmouse;
white-breasted nuthatches fidgeting through the pines, trunk to trunk;
American robins; dark-eyed junco; swamp sparrow (no swamp in sight);
dark-eyed junco; pine siskin; purple finch; northern cardinal.
*At the feeders, *blue jays—mostly absent since May—are back as regulars.
One sunflower seed at a time: take one, swallow, take another, then
another, until its crop bulges. Then the jay wings away to bury its small
harvest here and there, often in my raised beds.
*Black Walnuts on the Road (paved): *Black walnuts are part of the mast
year. Wherever people have planted them—only the white walnut, or
butternut, is native to northern New England—black walnuts pebble the roads
and stipple the lawns. Their shells are too tough for crows to crack, so
the birds enlist passing traffic and feast on the fragments. Or, borrowing
a trick from crab-eating herring gulls, they drop walnuts onto boulders and
roads. If the fall fails to split the hard shell, tires will. Then the
nutmeat lies open to chickadees, titmice, blue jays—and me.
