Date: 10/28/26 7:03 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 28 October 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:47 a.m., thirty-three minutes before sunrise. Twenty-one degrees. A
south-southeast wind barely stirs at one mile per hour, without a gust—at
least on my side of the hill, where even the last clinging aspen leaves are
still. The moon, bright and a tick less than full in the west, awaits the
sun, still hidden well below Moose Mountain. The eastern sky glows a faded
bumblebee orange, brushed with thin, fraying clouds.
Below Dothan Hill, where the White River spills its freight into the
Connecticut River, a lone patch of fog sits low, small, shape-changing. The
Connecticut, far larger, carries deeper, warmer water than the White, and
the warmer air above the river is highly humid. The air above the White is
cooler and also highly humid. Where the rivers mingle, the warmer air above
the Connecticut cools and can no longer carry all its moisture. Hence, a
small cloud born at the meeting of two rivers.
Red oak leaves begin to let go, gathering along the shoulder of the road,
red-brown and brittle against the yellow aspen leaves that light the
ground. Those still holding to their branches have darkened to the color of
old pennies and will cling through winter, a russet screen behind which the
owl hunts.
The ticking of sparrows—mostly white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed
juncos—rises from the withered meadow. Not a cricket answers. Four crows,
awake and aloft before the sun, wing westward, trailing a few disheartened
caws. For the moment, the airwaves belong to them. On Monday afternoon, I
attended a Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology video seminar on *corvids*—the
crow family—presented by Dr. Kaeli Swift, a Seattle-based ornithologist.
Although I knew crows recognize human faces, sorting them into tolerable
and threatening, I had never imagined that friendship with a crow might
begin with cat food. Swift persuaded me to soften kitty kibble in water—dog
kibble contains too much iron—and scatter a handful for my neighborhood
crows. Perhaps, in time, they will come to count me as a friend.
A bird’s brain is small and lacks the folds of a mammal’s—a crow’s is
scarcely larger than a walnut—yet the brain-to-body ratio places corvids
and parrots alongside primates. Crows mate for life, with seventy-five
percent of chicks sired by monogamous pairs (like us, there
are extra-marital shenanigans). They reason. They imagine. They adapt. They
can see the world from another’s point of view. They mourn. They know us by
our faces, our gaits, our voices. Who wouldn’t want a crow for a friend?
(Or at least one that tolerates me.)
*Among the Other Birds:* Mourning doves lift into the morning and settle
along the electric line; a downy woodpecker hitches its way up the trunk of
a gray birch; a red-bellied woodpecker carries off one or two sunflower
seeds, tucks them into the crotch of a branch, then returns for more. A
flock of robins streams west over the shoulder of Hurricane Hill, while a
lone robin lingers in a crabapple. Tufted titmice and white-breasted
nuthatches call and flit, taking turns at the feeders; black-capped
chickadees seem to be everywhere, stitching the morning together with their
voices. Male and female purple finches gather at the feeders, a flutter of
color and wings.
*Among the Missing: *The barred owls sleep*. *No red-breasted nuthatches;
no song sparrows; no chipping sparrows; no gray catbirds. Absence leaves
its own mark on the morning: who is missing can be as interesting as who is
here.
