6:41 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 19 degree, wind SWS 1 mph. Sky: gray streaked with white, a small-flake snowfall, an inch on the ground, visibility less than a mile, a topographic abridgment. Permanent streams: an obscured and murmured flow. Trackless, mink elsewhere. Wetlands: snow dusts the porcelain marsh, coyote tracks in and out of the basin, a stable, measured progression (unlike my dogs, which slide across the surface as though on roller skates). From the marsh's far side, pileated drums in the evergreens, a woodpecker manifesto, six resounding volleys, separated by pauses between 25 and 33 seconds. One more use for a cellphone, the ultimate toy. (No more counting one one-thousand.) Pond: too slick to walk.
Crows loud and disagreeable. Aloft in the storm. A pair of red crossbills fly between pines, calling. No shortage of trees. No lack of cones. A feeding station provisioned by the valley and cyclical nature of white pines. Dove sleeping in maple, hunched up, looks neckless. In the oratorical world of jays, never a dull moment. Everyone calling at once, a mosh pit of sound. Chickadee flock mills around the front yard, all call, two sings. Then, a titmouse peter-peter. An unintended interspecies duet.
Black-capped chickadees and tufted titmice are considered nuclear species. Form winter flock that may attract other species, kinglets, warblers (if any are around), nuthatches. Maybe a creeper or a downy woodpecker. Both chickadees and titmice mob perched hawks or owls, their agitated voices almost always attract more company . . . including a wayfaring naturalist tuned to trouble.
If you can ever take pictures of the coyote prints you mentioned, I would like to see them. Before the last two snow falls this week, there were human size foot prints crisscrossing the frozen brook behind our house. The heel was narrow with wide spread toes, but because of the melting and freezing that occurred, there were no toe or nail prints. I've looked up as much as I could on line, and have found coyote and bobcat prints that look a little like the ones we've seen, but definitely had toes that we couldn't see in our brook prints. Thank you for waking me up to the wonderful world that surrounds us. Sarahjane