Date: 8/21/26 5:46 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 21 August 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
5:52 a.m. (eight minutes before sunrise). Fifty-one degrees, wind
north-northwest four miles per hour, gusting to eight. A tremor of aspen
leaves. Heavy river fog, crests unbraiding, stands rising over the summit
of Hurricane Hill. The sky clean blue everywhere but the east, which blooms
soft tangerine and orange deepens around the sun. Wisps of fog lit to
pastel apricot. Altogether, a quiet, fruit-colored sunrise. Clear, clean,
obedient to the seasons.
In a corner of the meadow, beneath the erratic goldfinches,
Jerusalem artichoke dominates, a wall of yellow. Some goldenrod gone to
seed; others bloom, sprays of yellow flaring like water from a fountain.
In the woods, green acorns dropping, loosened by jays and squirrels,
ticking through the leaves.
Hop hornbeam in seed, oblong clusters pendant at the ends of twigs. And
beneath everything, the eternal murmur of tree crickets. Then the screams
of pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers—brief, bright pockets of noise. One
on each side of the road.
*Department of Aerial Activity: *great blue heron and crow, both intent.
Crow heads north, high over the road. Heron south, higher still. Their
paths cross in the pale morning air, one hundreds of feet above the other.
*Just Passing Through: *6:11 a.m.: Tennessee warblers, too many to count,
never still, working the aspen leaves for little green caterpillars. Plain,
for a warbler—gray-green and small, with a white blaze through the eye.
Eye-level in Costa Rica; here at home ... forty and fifty feet
up—neck-cramping and eye-watering. Several myrtle warblers en route to the
outer beaches of Long Island (and beyond).
Chickadees and titmice. Nuthatches, both species. Song and chipping
sparrows. Juncos, fledged now from the begonia. Yellowthroat. Waxwings. A
brown creeper, a lonesome whisper in the pines. Jays scream. Raven belches.
Cardinal lends his red to a roadside lilac.
Hummingbirds are everywhere: at the feeders, in the begonia, in the vine
honeysuckle. Males. Females, Young-of-the-year. Much chasing. Not so much
feeding. A speck of a bird. How do they ever cross the Gulf of Mexico?
Through tropical weather and open dark, past hungry gulls, cuckoos, small
falcons, even spiders and praying mantises. One of Earth’s tiny miracles,
flickering before us, still almost too easy not to see.
*The Hunter and the Hunted: *Adjacent to the raspberry patch, above the
path into the meadow, a broad-winged hawk on a bouncing cherry branch. Up
and down, a woodland trampoline. Same perch as the barred owl in winter. A
bouncing ellipsoid, a tapered sphere. Drops to the ground. Rises
empty-taloned. Bouncing again, limb in motion, hawk shifting by degrees.
Then drops again. A burst of feathers, like a splash of water. Broadwing
rises, a small bird clutched in its talons ... and vanishes into the
shadows, a conspiracy of hemlocks.
