Date: 9/4/24 5:51 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 04 September 2024: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
5:52 a.m. 46 degrees, wind SW 1 mph. Low humidity, a landscape in sharp,
rolling relief from Moose Mountain north past Smarts, Cube, and, in the far
northeast, the looming mass of Moosilauke, gateway to the White Mountains,
a blue-gray block of granite very likely frosted. Like spun sugar, the
river fog is cottony, thick, low, white, and touched by the sun. Across the
White River, pockets of mist rise from green ridgeline creases, straight
up, thin and dispersing ... the ephemeral campfires of cool September
mornings. Twenty-two species of birds, including two warblers (
yellow-rumped and common yellowthroat), four woodpeckers (northern flicker,
pileated, downy, and hairy—all noisy), rose-breasted grosbeak in maple,
savannah sparrow in goldenrods bent and brightened by sunrise, and red-eyed
vireo whispering in the hardwoods.
Gray squirrel in a stand of young hemlocks, leaping, not climbing. I watch
the branches dance and occasionally glimpse the squirrel—more rabbit than
rodent—as it progresses toward a neighbor's bird feeder.
Five crows fly north, jittery stitches across an azure sky, luminously
black against immaculate blue, fade-away caws in their wake. A lone raven,
much more powerful, a Schwarzenegger among corvids, heads toward New
Hampshire, deep, methodically wingbeats brushed by the rising sun.
A female common yellowthroat, a first-year bird, hunts through the interior
of a honeysuckle. The yellowthroat surfaces as though coming up for air, a
spider clamped in her bill, long legs splayed across her face like a Mardi
Gras mask. Numbed by the cold, the spider offers no resistance. Clap, clap,
the spider tenderized, the yellowthroat swallows, blinks and then returns
for more.
Chickadees foraging in aspen, one tiny caterpillar at a time. Nuthatches
wander up and down pine trunks, probing into the micro spaces of the bark,
eating life too small to recognize.
