The bay.
A gray morning. When I first checked the thermometer I found temperatures to be hovering at just above freezing. An itchy breeze, a sense of change in the air.
Black-capped chickadee.
First I heard the titmouse. Then I heard a crow. Then I stepped out on the deck with my camera—and heard, in quick succession, chickadee, nuthatch, cardinal. At least I thought it was the cardinal, but then I began to question myself. That is, until the male redbird hopped up into a naked sapling not thirty or forty feet away and began to sing. I let off three quick photos, feeling lucky, before it flew, but my camera’s auto-focus snapped in on some distant limbs and all I got was a cardinal-shaped red blur.
Oak leaf.
On my trip to town, I saw the two main gull species but no pigeons for some reason. I haven’t figured the pigeons out—there’re either scores of them in multiple, wheeling flocks or none at all. Haven’t seen a starling in a while either. But the subsequent thought that, within a month, I’ll be hearing the flight songs of woodcocks made me have to beat back the expectation of spring. Don’t want to get ahead of myself.
It’d been almost a week, so I felt a tiny thrill pulling into the parking lot at the wooded Beech Hill trail head. The sugar bush clearing had progressed. The trails had turned from snowy to slushy, slippery, or bare. In fact, the footing proved tedious for the first couple hundred yards—but then it evened out a bit.
Right away I heard a chickadee. I pished it in and got a couple shots. How quickly these thawy conditions draw birds. Soon after I pished in another black-capped—though this one was somewhat less pugnacious.
Beech Nut.
Those were the only two birds. The rest of the hike had me contemplating the changing understory, the melting snow. I found fascinating the way last fall’s oak leaves, slightly warmed from their organic compsotion or the action of decomposition or some other scientific factor, sunk so evenly into the slushy snow.
At the summit the wind picked up. The sky was blue and lumpy and gray. Out in the bay, I could see a wide squall had formed—it looked to be headed my way. In the opposite direction, the ageless inland hills loomed as ever, but more darkly.
The trail down was slippery, but I didn’t fall. As I neared the bottom, it began to snow.
Today’s List
Tufted titmouse
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
White-breasted nuthatch
Northern cardinal
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Looking inland from the summit of Beech Hill.
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, herring gull, northern cardinal, ring-billed gull, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch
