7:08 a.m. 19 degrees, wind E 1 mph. Sky: clear and wintery, fog and frost, ice-sealed puddles and backwaters. Tonight: the second full moon of October, a Halloween Blue Moon, first Blue Moon since March 2018, and first Halloween Blue since 1944, five days after the US and Australia won the largest naval battle in history (three hundred ships and four hundred planes). Next Blue Moon: August 2023. Next Halloween Blue: 2039. NASA also rates tonight's full moon a micro moon because it's approximately 15,000 miles farther from Earth than average; supposedly, the moon appears slightly smaller. Good luck with noticing the difference. Permanent streams: fuller by the day; rocks free of ice but leaves frozen and crusty. Wetlands: bright marsh glazed; frost rimes alder branches and withering leaves, featherings of tiny icicles. Pond: three female mergansers bunch and dive. One catches a crayfish, the others nada. Out of the woods and into the water . . . a mink, sleek and dark brown. Sinuous swimming, back and forth along the shore. A dive. A catch. A bullfrog. Ducks complacently bold and apparently apathetic, swim past mink, which mounts the bank and disassembles the frog . . . the epicurean's delight. Mergansers carry on, diving and huddling, unfazed. Foolish ducks, it could have been one of you.
Finished, mink retreats into the woods, a fleeting departure behind a stone wall.
Yesterday afternoon: six red crossbills high in the pines, tweezing seeds from dangling cones. Call in flight, a distinctive kip, kip, kip. Tree to tree, feeding and calling, always together. Appeared to be wrestling the cones.
This morning: a crossbill flies over the road, several kips and gone. A bumper crop of cones, clustered like grapes on the end of branches, has been attended by red squirrels since August. I have been waiting for the crossbills since before the maples began to blush. A friend in southwestern New Hampshire had them six weeks ago. Finally, they're here.
Along the edge of the marsh, a pair of grouse explodes, a heart-pounding disruption. Three ravens pass over and a blue jay—more nuthatches than yesterday. Juncos everywhere, white-rimmed tails flashing. Robin calls from the alders.
Loosened by the sun, uncountable oak leaves rain down . . . in complete disregard of my raking.