6:06 a.m. 61 degrees, wind N 2 mph. Sky: full moon sets behind a screen of ground fog; Venus, just east of mid-valley, brightens a thin, pale pink swath of clouds; leaves dripping, moisture dispersing. Permanent streams: upper, slightly refreshed; lower, puddles merger and flow just beyond the wooden bridge, then retreat beneath the surface; infuse the marsh subterraneanly . . . the secrecy of groundwater; robin rock hops down the dry streambed. Wetlands: a bowl of mist, far shore a hazy memory. Pond: surface still; a tributary of fog flows in from the marsh, screens a world with little to hide; a small pickerel frog leaps away from the dogs and me; an explosive hopper.
DOR: a tire-tenderized chipmunk
AOR: tiny red eft, an inch-and-a-half long; cutest amphibian of the morning. Escorted off the road and released.
A dray of gray squirrels pause on a maple trunk, mom and four nearly grown kits; group huddle; cement plans, then up the tree and out across a large horizontal branch, deeper into the woods. Squirrels more attractive out of the garage, away from lawn chairs and feeders. Early Labor Day celebration, red squirrels took the morning off; no pinecone splashdowns.
Pileated derisively laughing, wild, resounding, fog-piercing, defines a landscape like an owl or a hawk or a loon or a coyote; speaks for the trees and the mist, adding an element of remoteness and mystery to a world too often taken for granted. Crows and jays. Two red-breasted nuthatches. Olive-sided flycatcher. Eyelevel in the alders, between the marsh and the pond, a mixed flock of chickadees and warblers. Black-throated greens. Cape Mays. And . . . one Connecticut warbler, the first I've seen since Tony Lauro banded two in the Tobay Bird Sanctuary, on the bayside of Jones Beach, circa 1974. A biggish warbler with a gray hood, complete white eyering, faded yellow undersides, olive back—a bird not in a hurry, just above the ground. I watch, thrilled, until the warbler flits deeper into the alders, closer to the marsh.
Connecticut warbler, named for a state where it doesn't nest, where it's not even a common migrant. Heads for jungles east of the Andes, the heart of Amazonia. An ambassador of the unexpected. As I approached the pond, I harbored thoughts of an otter not of a rare warbler . . . a delicious surprise. Keeps me smiling long after I walk in the front door.