6:42 a.m. 43 degrees, wind S 0 mph, a raw sunrise; the sort of morning that steered Ishmael to sea. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, wrote Melville, whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul . . . Sky (and Earth): a vaporous bundle. Permanent streams: refreshed by last night's rain but definitely not up to par. Wetlands: less than mid-marsh visibility; fog muffles both vision and hearing. Pond: wind-organized pine needles crowding into the south cove, form enchanting patterns, tightly arrayed like iron filings administered by a magnet. I break through the roof of a mole tunnel, then follow the excavation with the toe of my shoe to the water's edge, very likely the work of a star-nosed mole, a wetland insectivore with a tentacled nose.
Blue jays flying in and out of red oaks; some squawking, some reticent, all yanking acorns off stout twigs; crops bulge like goiters, four or five acorns per bird. Blue jays harvest only healthy acorns; plant them one at a time, here and there, just under the leaf litter. Blue-jay planted nuts left uneaten sprout nearly ninety percent of the time; those that fall off the tree only about ten percent, which may explain why oaks spread north so quickly after the Ice age; according to pollen analysis, on average three hundred eighty yards per year. (Compare that to the spruces, whose windblown seeds moved north approximately two hundred seventy yards per year.) Jays travel miles between roosting and feeding sites and storage sites, circulating both cacophonous notes and acorns. The red oaks of Coyote Hollow echo collective decisions made by communities of blue jays—selecting, dispersing, caching, retrieving—over the past century . . . the distribution of oaks in eastern North America represents an alliance between jays and trees over a period of time that exceeds human memory.
Gray squirrel, not nearly as well-traveled as a blue jay, gets far too much credit as a forester. (And, unlike jays, squirrels hoard their harvest in much deeper piles).
Calculatingly nonchalant, five chickadees tear beaked hazelnut catkins off twigs, small, paired, sausage-shaped male flowers, set in place for next April. Each bird takes a catkin to another perch, holds it in place with its toes, and then pecks off the anterior end. Surfeit or bored, chickadees eat for a few minutes, then move on, voices lingering behind them.
I guess Ishmael didn't have Nantucket blue jays and chickadees to buoy his spirits. Post-Color in overcast Vermont, drizzle oozing out of damp air, my mobility hijacked by a virus; I have chickadees and blue jays to animate even the darkest, dankest, most dismal morning. An ineluctable truth: living things have meaning in terms of what they do . . . blue jays and chickadees, those most companionable of birds, do a lot for me.