6:50 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). -4 degrees, wind NW 2 mph. Sky: pinkish-gray striations transition into a thin, white cloud-screen, a filter that softens shadows, reduces contrast . . . but the valley itself, bathed in sifted sunshine, still remains deep-freezer cold. Permanent streams: mink version of Route 66, pathways into and out of the marsh. Paired footprints. Holes in the snow. Tunnels. Slid down the bank of the lower stream, a short ride, body as a toboggan. If you're going to live your life alone, a solitary hunter on frozen ground, why not enjoy it? An otter couple stays together, raises pups as a family, glorifies parenthood. Male and female mink take a different approach; mating involves chasing and fighting and overpowering, more Texas Death Match than tender caresses. Female mink rears kits alone. Wetlands: an encampment of cold, heavy air set to music by a lone chickadee and a pair of white-breasted nuthatches, non-stop vocal dueling. Pond: no change.
Huskily cawing, a crow flies north. Close to the road, a flock of red crossbills shares white pine with a single white-winged crossbill—both rain calls, a clattering chorus of gyps and tyks, dry and unmusical. For a moment, crossbills hang on pinecones, tweezing seeds. Then, they decamp, fly over the marsh toward the wall of evergreens, calls fading behind them.
Male hairy woodpecker on a pole-sized, dead pine. An acoustical savant tests three drumming sites, two twice. Makes selection, a barkless patch, just above the mid-tree. Hammers away, head blurring, a percussionist's clock dialed to spring. Broadcast accompanies me uphill.
An immature red-tailed hawk, in the crown of a maple, stares at the feeders. Chickadees and jays carry on, back and forth for seeds, ignore the hawk. Gray squirrels, conspicuous by their absence, wait somewhere in the shadows. Hawk sees me and relocates, commands aspen outpost above the stone wall, his poise recovered on the edge of the woods. A dignified brigand, breeze teasing leg feathers. Cold forgotten, I crack a smile.