7:31 a.m. 27 degrees, wind ESE 1 mph (so subtle a breath even beech leaves don't notice). Sky: in limbo. Eventually, several rolls of white clouds separate out of the blue-gray, unspool, then merge again. Blue-white replaces blue-gray, ruffled replaces taut, as a dull sky lightens, lumen by lumen. Wetlands: babbling incoherently, water hurries to join the marsh, leaving me in the lull of the flow. Wetlands: silent, under a rolling landscape of clouds, now white. Pond: airtight, corked by snow and ice. My attention draws to three errant oak leaves, blemishes on an otherwise pristine surface, trackless and cotton-white.
Dogs smell a tapered, two-inch-long scat deposited mid-road—then sink into a drunken canine stupor. Deep breaths grade to snorts. They're one small step from a token meal. Scat seems small for a coyote. Maybe a fox, red or gray, both conspicuous by their absences (for more than a year).
Stereophonic red-breasted nuthatches, two groups on either side of the pond. All calling at once: ink, ink, ink. Most nuthatches I've seen or heard since December 15, when a cold front (7 degrees, wind NW 9 mph) swept through the valley. Chickadee on a hemlock twig, up and down, up and down . . . a spindly teeter-totter. A playground in the trees.
The lure of snow. Assembled below the feeders: six doves, two gray squirrels, and Ernie, the Hungarian partridge, collectively dwarfed by nine turkeys. Flitting from feeders to cherry: five blue jays, a white-breasted nuthatch, a male hairy woodpecker, and whimsical chickadees. A jovial, hyper-energetic mob, like sparks of static electricity. No pause back and forth. One leader. Uncountable, ungovernable acolytes. Who’s who? But they have my attention . . . again. Flock much too domestic a term for the swirling chaos at the feeder. Mob more appropriate.