Hillside.
The sky today had a dreamlike quality. White clouds hung low above a white landscape, with snow still sticking to the north sides of the tree trunks days after the recent storm. They looked like skeletons, the tree trunks. We’re in that January time when winter tightens its grip, the temperature flirts with freezing but barely edges above it, and ice takes hold. Small stripes of blue occurred from time to time, but no sun shone through. I spent the morning and early afternoon at my desk, keeping busy.
Weed.
But dog and I somehow managed to tear ourselves free about 2 p.m. Grabbed my binoculars and camera, pulled on my down jacket with the gloves in its pockets, made a beeline for Beech Hill.
No one else was there when we arrived—few could make it into the unplowed parking lot anyway, I figure. Heck, even I had to back up and charge through a second time.
But Jack and I like to walk the hill alone. Right off the bat, I heard an odd bird call and stopped to listen. Soon the call turned into the jeers of a blue jay. Then another. I looked over to see a pair of jays flap away to the north, crossing the road. First blue jays of 2011.
I’d donned showshoes again, of course. And I wasn’t the only one to have hiked the hill in such footwear today. Whoever we are, we snowshoers, we’ve already flattened a pretty good channel up the open trail. (Jack was grateful, I could tell.) And I can appreciate the extra effort snowshoing requires—I like to get to breathing heavily.
Winter trail.
Not far up the trail, I heard the chattering of a woodpecker from across the road behind us. We stopped, I listened. A flicker. Two flickers, calling back and forth. We turned and continued on up.
The sky remained dreamlike: mostly overcast, but with wide sweeps of crazy vacant blue. Odd that none of the breaks in the clouds let the sun shine through, I thought—until nearing the summit, I looked out over the bay and islands. Off toward Blue Hill, a wide swath of sunlight illuminated a collection of islands, making them stand out like a revelation amid an otherwise the dim, blue, underwater-like world. And behind us, sun had suddenly lit the very top of Ragged Mountain.
Right about then, a fair-sized flock of small passerines rose from the eastern slope and whirled around in front of us and up and over the snowy slope. I first thought perhaps they were Bohemian waxwings—which would’ve been a Beech Hill first—but then I heard them tittering, and their voices were not waxwing voices. Snapped off a couple hasty photos. Decided they must’ve been horned larks (as my fuzzy photos later confirmed). They disappeared on over to the west.
Not a lot of wind up there today for a change. We took our time coming down. I looked for the barred owl again but didn’t see it. The flicker continued to call down at the base of the trail.
Beech Nut.
Sometime later, I looked up to see a rainbow halo around the waxing moon. Snow tomorrow? The forecast calls for the possibility. I suppose we shall see.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 2:15 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. Blue jay
2. Northern flicker (voice)
3. Horned lark
Elsewhere
4. American crow
5. Herring gull
6. Rock pigeon
7. European starling
8. American robin
Birch.
Tags: American crow, blue jay, European starling, herring gull, horned lark, northern flicker, rock pigeon
