5:14 a.m. 60 degrees, windless out of the N (says my weather app). No breath to the morning. Still enough and cool enough for mist to gather above the wetland and nearly erase the western shoreline. Still enough for mosquitos, which accompany me every step of the way. No sign of Mount Ascutney. Intermittent streams at a standstill, puddling. Some already dry. The two permanent streams I cross each morning, the wetland's umbilical connection to the east, flow slowly and quietly, moving far less water and freight than last month.
Last night I heard gray treefrogs (Hyla versicolor). First-of-the-year in the Hollow. They're on their way to the wetland’s nether region; a uvular trill or three spills out of the aspens. A gray treefrog is Vermont's version of a chameleon. Inside thighs are bright, eye-popping yellow, everything else variable: green, gray, black, brown, almost white. Unlike a real chameleon, the frog transitions its outfit slowly, too slowly to watch. Memory: a gray treefrog showed me the only ruby-throated hummingbird nest I’ve ever seen. Some years ago, while looking through the viewfinder of my camera, framing a treefrog on a branch, an out-of-focus hummingbird passed into my field of view, and then settled onto a tiny lichen-decorated nest, just behind the frog.
DOR: Pre-shed milk snake, her skin dulled by winter. She was large enough to swallow a chipmunk. Slow enough to be run over on her way to the wetland . . . to a smorgasbord of rodents.
AOR: Robin and junco grit gathering. And a slug that appears lost.
Just beyond the snake carcass, a broad-winged hawk flushes from a roadside limb, silent as mist. Like goshawks, broadwings hunt from perches, often adjacent to a woodland opening (i.e. roads). Unlike goshawks, however, no chase involved, just a devilish drop. American toads, chipmunks, and garter snakes preferred menu items. A male mallard stands on the shoreline of the pond; too big to entice a broadwing. (Not too big for a goshawk.) Turkeys gobble in the woods above the pond. First time I've heard them there. A black-throated blue warbler (FOY) singing in ash. Did he arrive last night or did I just miss him for the past two weeks?
Chestnut-side warbler, untroubled by mosquitos, sings in the cherry, again. Guttural and predicable. Not likely headed for a 2021 Grammy nomination. But what a marvelous looking bird . . . and trusting. An incomplete story within a panorama of time that stretches from a remote past into an unimagined future, a colorful package of genetic material endless honed by the world we live in.
10:32 a.m. 78 degrees (starting to cook), wind SSE 3 mph (not enough to push mosquitos away). In a dip on the eastern rim of the valley, just above a rock outcrop, the female goshawk spots me, aimlessly looking for her. She flies just above the canopy, screaming; lands in full view, then flies, lands, flies . . . ad infinitum. She's stout and maneuverable, a Jimmy Brown among birds. In fact, if I had to draft a football team composed solely of diurnal birds of prey, the goshawk's my fullback, no question . . . maybe my entire backfield rolled into one robust, energetic bundle of life. (Peregrine's my wide receiver, also no question.)
A hermit thrush and a blackburnian warbler sing in hemlock shade unfazed that they live in the shadow of Vesuvius. Neighborhood songbirds: background vocals for drowsy hawklets; snacks for their parents.