6:44 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 12 degrees, wind WNW 8 mph, hums down Robinson Hill and across the marsh, a woodland stimulant, branches waving, thin trunks rocking. Sky: clear, clean, rose blush across the south, Mount Ascutney above the horizon, barely, a granitic cloud, iron-hard and ghost-gray. Permanent streams: upper, mink headed uphill, cut a hole into crusty snow, plunged into the dark, rushing water, exited a stylish gap in the ice, specks of stream bottom on frozen snow like pepper on egg whites; lower, bobcat walked upstream, very faint tracks on crusty snow—four oblong toe pads, no claw marks, three-lobed heel pad like the interlocked rings of the old Ballantine Beer logo—sinking here and there, well-defined prints at the bottom of each frozen tube. Wetlands: pileated drums in evergreens, echoes across the marsh, pauses for a minute, regains composure, and drums again. Pauses . . . and then laughs deliriously—a seismic laugh. My eyebrows rise, I look across the skin of reeds . . . for a glimpse of the antediluvian woodpecker, black and white and crest on fire. Hope dashed. Woodpecker falls silent. Pond: dogs and I follow our shapeless, frozen footprints, another figure 8. A neighbor started to plow. Gave up; the snow much too heavy.
Yesterday, under the feeders: blood on the snow. One less gray squirrel. An aerial attack. Likely, the vigilant redtail, the only hawk I've noticed in the front yard recently, instigated a reign of terror. By the time the owls arrive, hooting from the ash and black walnut, gray squirrels already trekked home to the shoulders of Robinson Hill, tucked-in for the night. Had six, now five, all eating breakfast on blood-stained snow. In the woods: the core and scales of a pinecone, late lunch of a red squirrel.
Raven, a harbinger of sunrise, calls in an empty sky. High over the Hollow, the audible gate into the brilliance of the morning. Crow caws. Red-breasted nuthatch toots. White-breasted, a dampened rendition of a laughing pileated. Chickadee whistles in a pine, flits branch by branch higher up the tree, while all around a chorus of unenthusiastic dees. Leader of the pack? Sunshine: stardust on a brittle morning. Cheerfully, I enter my day.
I'm confused about sunrise being one minute earlier followed by two minutes earlier, followed by one, etc. What's happening. Perhaps I missed the explanation...