6:49 a.m. 46 degrees, wind ESE 2 mph. Sky: clear in the east, hints of pink; in the west, a diagonal mega-link of bright, oval clouds, peach-rinsed. Fog more pronounced than yesterday; thicker above water; rolls uphill, creeps into pastures. Permanent streams: noisy in the sinuous narrows; silent in the sprawling trunk. Wetlands: rising mist softens shoreline texture, eclipses shoreline color, accentuates sausage clouds, which dominates an otherwise empty sky. Pond: four mergansers rush to judgment, disturb the lull . . . and go. Everywhere in the weeds, small bowl-and-doily spiderwebs, jeweled by dew. A murmur of crickets, an end of the year serenade. An aisle through matted goldenrods and asters, up the bank and into the water. Dogs keenly interested, finally. I think it's an otter. Noses to grass, dogs know . . . but aren't saying. Blueberry leaves bright red, blackberry dull purple. Roosting doves, coming and going, loose yellow maple leaves, which float into the garden. Biscotti-colored beech leaves paper-thin; Merlo-colored oak leaves leather-thick.
From the next valley west, soft caws of crows. When pileated hollers, I listen. An unassuming creeper heads up a maple trunk; a boisterous nuthatch heads down a pine. Everywhere else, chickadees, chickadees, chickadees. Adjacent to the mouth of the wetlands, just above the crippled beaver dam, a clique of robins in the crowns of pines, calling, a rapidly repeated chirr. Not a predator alarm. There's none around (that I can see). Several years ago, in the Jones Beach dunes, an immature goshawk snagged a hapless robin and took it back to the frame of a rotted observation tower. While the hawk plucked its kill, nearby robins screamed, a rapidly repeated series of sharp, caustic notes . . . far different than the mellow notes I hear this morning.
Deliciously alive, red squirrels play tag, one after the other. Up and down pine trunks, across limbs, racing and leaping, screaming, hemorrhaging energy while utterly disregarding social distancing.
Just below the summit of Robinson Hill, the sun ignites aspen globe, yoke-yellow in an otherwise naked woodland.