Date: 11/11/26 6:14 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 11 November 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:16 a.m. Twenty-two minutes before sunrise. Thirty-five degrees, wind
west-northwest at four miles per hour, gusting to fourteen (against the far
side of the hill). No sign of the moon (on the far side of Earth). Clear
overhead. To the northeast, clouds crowd the horizon, their long lines
brushing the summits of Smarts Mountain and Mount Cube. Farther northeast,
at the threshold of the White Mountains, Mount Moosilaukee wears a cloud
cap and a dusting of snow.
Dots and dashes of river fog above the Connecticut River and the well below
the hills—an ephemeral, fraying Morse code.
Rained much of the night. The road is wet, the carpet of leaves matted. A
two-inch slug, mid-road, slowly crosses the street—a small pilgrimage of
pauses. I have neither the time nor the patience to watch its progress.
Slugs are hermaphrodites; like many *gastropods,* they possess both male
and female sex organs. Many species self-fertilize. Which pronoun do I
offer this traveler?
Eventually, sunlight brushes the hills above the White River and turns
distant clouds a soft lavender-pink. On my side of the river (southeast),
my side of the hill (northeast), light spills slowly down the trees,
kindling their skeletal crowns and upper trunks, wet and glistening.
Cool and wet, an ordinary November sunrise. Parsley still holds its green
in my raised bed, but the world leans toward winter. Rotten limbs, pruned
by the wind, litter the woods—nutrients slowly finding their way home.
Whenever Ishmael felt a *damp, drizzly November in *[his] *soul, *he
deemed it *high time to get to sea ...* but the crows seem content here.
Singles and pairs, black stitching across a bright sky. One watches me from
a maple. Caws. No flocks today, only scattered wings. A lone raven crosses
the sky, reticent as rock, passing above them all.
*Among the Others: *mourning doves, their wings giving voice to flight;
American robins dining on crabapples and highbush cranberries; mixed flocks
of white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, and
black-capped chickadees; blue jay calling, and another, crop bulging with
sunflower seeds, perches on the deck railing; flock of cedar waxwings above
the meadow, heading west; dark-eyed juncos chip, chip, chipping beneath the
goldenrods and lilacs.
*A Tide of Chickadees:* For the past several days, a tide of chickadees has
flowed through my sunflower feeders. These are not all local birds.
Although I cannot tell one chickadee from another, I can count. Yesterday,
at any given moment, three or four gathered on the feeders, several waited
on the railing, and others flew back and forth. Some ate their seeds on the
spot; others carried them away, tucking small provisions into the creases
of bark and the forks of twigs.
Raccoons move through the night, round and fat, gathering autumn into
themselves—acorns, apples, compost, roadkill, chilled frogs, unharvested
corn. At dusk, I bring the bird feeders indoors, leaving the dark to its
own hunger. Months now without a sign of a black bear.
