Birch in fog.
While awakening, I became aware of rain pattering on the leaves and back roof and the dim rush of car tires on the road out front. Took dog out into the mist, and we both got wet. Turned on more lights than usual. Didn’t wear my sandals for a change.
Jack on the trail.
Got some desk stuff done. Drove here and there with Jack doing errands in mid-afternoon. Saw gulls and mourning doves in flight. Flushed a tight little flock of sparrows along the roadside. Our last “errand”: a quick hike up Beech Hill.
Fog blanketed the summit, and the drips from trees peppered the parking lot. Not much wind. As we commenced to walking, I opened my ears—and heard the faint, three-note call of a golden-crowned kinglet coming from up in the trees. Also chickadees. And the notes of a titmouse. Crow in the distance. I wasn’t expecting so many, so soon.
We started up the open trail just as a nuthatch began beeping faintly from somewhere. Five year-round resident species making their presence known (although I suppose titmice might require a feeding station). And within a couple minutes, up ahead on the foggy trail, I flicker suddenly took off in undulating flight. Then another. At our approach, the pair of them then undulated farther away down the southern slope. Heard a jay in the distance.
Chain-dotted geometer.
All was wet up there. Including, I presume, the crickets I heard calling. I also watched a small white moth (a chain-dotted geometer) flutter about, and a large black dragonfly making a great angular circuit above the grass. Out back of Beech Nut the grass gives way to a wide swatch of clover whose leaves were bejeweled with water droplets. Saw no hawks or ravens above the foggy hillsides, as I have before.
Despite its dampness and brevity, Jack and I enjoyed our afternoon hike, as usual—except this is the last we’ll share for more than a week, because my friend Liz picked him up and brought him to her house in Belfast, where her family will keep dog company until my return from Monhegan a week from Saturday. I miss the guy already.
Tonight crickets sing out there, and I hear the chirps of night birds in the dark trees. Still fog-cloaked and drippy out. I seem to have spent this whole day in a cloud.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 2:30 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. Golden-crowned kinglet (voice)
2. Black-capped chickadee (voice)
3. Tufted titmouse (voice)
4. American crow (voice)
5. White-breasted nuthatch (voice)
6. Northern flicker
7. Blue jay (voice)
8. Eastern towhee (voice)
Elsewhere
9. Herring gull
10. Mourning dove
Clover.
