Homeboy at Home Vaccinated and Kind of Acting Normal
May 18, 2021: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT
5:20 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 46 degrees (cool enough to hold black flies down but not mosquitoes), wind N 0 mph. Sky: textured, shades of blue and gray; in the west, vaguely colorized, a lavender wash. Permanent streams: lower, slower flows mumble like disembodied bitterns, a hollow tribute. Wetlands: green growth traces both sides of the main channel, everywhere else (at the moment) greenwash amid broken reeds, marsh slowly coming of age. Swamp sparrow (FOY) trilling in the alders. Red-shouldered hawk, yesterday's provocateur, today's unspoken nobility, silent as stone. Pond: apple petals on the water, catbird in tangles meows then riffs through sunrise. Hen merganser stands on a shoreline spit (second time in past four days), bolt upright like a murre on a crag. We look at each other, her yellow eyes burning holes in the morning. Then, she leaps into flight . . . no taxiing across the water, no stirring of the apple-petal flotilla, which drifts, fades, sinks with the season.
Yellow birch catkins litter the road like so many pale-green caterpillars. Aspen seed pods more conspicuous than leaves, dangling, a dull, pale green. Young beech leaves, neon green with copper-edging, two-toned and delicate . . . spring treasures. Cherries, apples, crabapples petals adrift on the tides of the season. Ostrich and cinnamon ferns unfurling. Trillium fading. Roadside dandelion setting seed.
AOR: hermit thrush; three robins; two tiny efts, a bright toxic orange.
The gloaming: owl pulls down the curtain, titmouse cranks it up. The impatience of flickers: rapid-fire delivery, rapid drumming, rushes headlong into the morning. Hermit thrushes singing (I can't get enough hermit thrushes); blue-headed vireos own the airwaves, still out-number red-eyed vireos. Where are the red-eyes? (Never thought I'd say that.) In limited release: veeries and Nashville warblers arrived in The Hollow last night (both FOY).
Spring migration 2021, more tiptoe than road race. The second weekend in May 2016: on the rim of Lake Erie, between Oberlin and Toledo, I had twenty-one species of warblers at Magee Marsh, including more bay-breasteds and Cape Mays than I had seen collectively in my lifetime. The second weekend in May 2019: I had twenty species. A friend, who had recently visited Magee, emailed me last night that she saw only two species of warblers. Neotropical migrants taking their time, buffeted by northwest winds and cold snaps.
May 18, 2020: I had nine species of warblers in The Hollow. May 18, 2021: five (yellowthroat, chestnut-sided, Nashville, ovenbird, black-throated green).
Like baby smiles, no two springs are identical. 2021: broad-winged hawks on time; olive-sided and alder flycatchers still missing. I saw a woodcock yesterday, plump patron of the alders, wander through the tangles; bill down, probing for soft, animated edibles; eyes up scanning, hoping not to be someone else's soft, animated edible.
Even when the season appears disjointed, you can't go wrong wandering outside . . . there's always something going on, something to take my mind off moving. Dylan certainly wasn't referencing warblers or home sales, but . . . There's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend.
Is it my age or has this been the most spectacular spring ever?! Our golden plum tree literally glows in the morning light and the birds have a lot to say even if they aren't talking to me. Thank you again and again for bringing so much to my eyes, ears, and heart.
A lovely rendition of your morning, thank you. What is AOR? Along Our Road? No....