6:17 a.m. 59 degrees, wind N 7 mph. Sky: as I watch, clouds forged out thin air, blue-gray and drifting south; eventually filling every air-borne cavity; fogless and dark. Permanent streams: upper, puddles and threads of water barely leaning west; a slow journey to a parched marsh; lower, desolation row; desert-dry, decorative orange maple leaves join yellow basswood leaves on arid rocks. Wetlands: color-rich, water shallow. Pond: a flotilla of leaves pushed into the south cove; future bedding for tadpoles and turtles.
Yellow creeps through the trees on all levels, ash with a hint of purple. Hundreds of cones litter the road below a tall, crooked pine; only the thinnest branches hold cones, which hang like banana bunches, ripe, and ready for squirrels. If I stand long enough, anywhere, a leaf floats down; a loose spec of color that arrests attention on a quiet morning.
Two pewees passing through the valley trim their summer song, just as melancholy as the unabridged version. Two red-breasted nuthatches. A smattering of chickadees. The morning belongs to blue jays, everywhere and enthusiastic; flying from pine to pine, out over the marsh, the pond, the dwarf alders; stopping in the tops of hemlocks, rocking in the breeze like wind vanes. Always screaming, alerting the world to their presence, dawn's alarm clock. I expect jays to have something to say; rarely do they keep their thoughts to themselves.
But once, many years ago, along the edge of the Connecticut River, a sharp-shinned hawk chase a horde of jays into a hemlock. Desperate and terrified, the jays fell silent. The sharpie tore into the hemlock, exited with a limp jay in its talons. Then, their tongues loosened, the birds screamed unabated, and pored out of the tree like a blue storm; chased the hawk, which casually flew away, in command of its crumbled cargo. The only time I recall speechless blue jays.
I watch the jays, the way I watch baseball; look for nuanced expressions of the players; the subtlest clue that might reveal the immediate future. Passing through? Staying all winter? Quebecois on COVID holiday? Natives of the valley? Maybe they've visited my front yard feeders, fattening on sunflower seeds grown in Kansas, before departing for Maryland. A band of rowdy blue threads cinches an otherwise dull morning together, utterly common, utterly wild, utterly free.
Behind the barn door, two bats brace for the coming cold.