6:58 a.m. 27 degrees, wind WNW 13 mph, the sound of traffic, tall pines thin as poles stir the air high above half an inch of snow. Sky: lowering clouds, gray and disheveled. A pruning wind loosens rotted branches. Road slippery and snowy, tracked by a wandering coyote. Until the sanding truck passes at sunrise, I walk the crinkled road edges. Permanent streams: higher water levels, rocks dusted. Mink tracks cross the road above the upper stream, disappear into the woods. Wetlands: three crows, ceaselessly and silently flapping, north over the marsh, buffeted by gusting wind. A slow, methodical progression. Pond: open and agitated, rolling surface, dancing light. Coyote tracks along the western edge, a straight, thoughtful line of footprints, one print after another—course set. Beast on a mission, no veering, unlike my dogs, which go a step left, a step right for every step forward.
On the way home, a flock of seventeen red crossbills, tree-top height, a chorus of kip, kip, kip. Beyond the pines, calls fade quickly, hijacked by the wind. Classic doppler effect.
Under the feeder, a forlorn turkey. My neighbor, on the eastern rim of the Hollow, had fifty-four . . . not a flock, a herd. He texted me a progression video, a long, sinuous line of fifteen- to twenty-five-pound birds marching out of the woods, around the pond, uphill across the meadow. The turkeys could pass for dairy cows, dark and round, parading across a cropped field carpeted with snow. Several hours later, twenty-five reached my yard, a boulevard of virgin snow. Turkeys wandered in and out of the garage, around the raspberries, the garden, the red oaks, out across the upper pasture, ravenous birds on a dawn to dusk binge.
As gloom descends, the last turkey abandons the pasture for the pines, sated—an oblique departure.