6:40 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 50 degrees (5 degrees colder than Christmas morning 2020), wind NNW 2 mph. Sky: fog rising out of every crease and wrinkle in the landscape, thickest over the Ompompanoosuc River, thinnest over the intermittent streams; mist meets drizzle, hard to tell true identity of the moisture. Raindrops sag from buds and cones and the elbows of every twig. Permanent streams: upper, cascading over streambed stones; lower, ricocheting off both banks, swirling into eddies that are absorbed by the main channel; exuberant flow drowns out robin singing in basswood. Wetlands: hooded merganser pair, first ducks since lock-up, bobbing and weaving around a cake of ice. Female dives. Male stretches neck across back, crest erect. Looks up. Holds position until female pops up—waterfowl yoga. Mergansers ride the current downstream to the next seasonal pool. Pond: ice withdrawing from shore, delta opening, feeder stream cuts farther into the pond, a black wedge in a sea of gray decay.
Out of the dripping woods, the red-shouldered hawk screams. Junco trills and a chorus of chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and jays chime in. A wet robin leans back, yellow bill skyward, and sings, loud and clear and full of verve, as though the sky really hadn't collapsed. I stand below the tree and watch, leaning on my umbrella, dogs at my feet . . . indulging my interests.
Six small songbirds, high in the pines, singing. Sound (sort of) like yellow-rumped warblers. Look (sort of) like gray tracers flitting among the evergreens. I grew up with yellow-rumps on the winter beaches, bayberry eaters that called but rarely sang. It wouldn't take more than a night to reach Vermont from Long Island or Cape Cod's outer banks. Great weather. Wind out of the south. But still, yellow-rumps in late March, says Chris Rimmer, executive director of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, unprecedented. So who did I hear? Redpolls? Siskins? I didn't think so.
Gratefully, some mysteries like stardust endure . . .