Tag Archives: hermit thrush

Gem of a State Park

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IMG_3860After work today I popped over to Niquette State Park in Colchester. It is hidden not far from Interstate 89. Easy to get to, the place was not busy. I pulled into the parking lot and saw a few other cars. It looked like a group of runners. They were packing up and drove out of there before I got out of my car. One other guy was just tying on his shoes. We hit the trail at the same time.

The place isn’t huge but it has several miles of trails. I had been there before and had taken the direct route right to the lake. When the lake isn’t at flood stage, as it is now, there is a beach. Now the water covers the base of the trees at the shore. It is wet.

Today I took a different trail. I headed uphill on a rocky path with ledges and a even cliffs. It wound around up to a lookout over the lake. It was beautiful. Maybe it was the gray afternoon with the bright green leaves just popping out. Maybe it was the white and pink trilliums blooming everywhere. Maybe the ledges looked their best in the dampness from the rain showers. I was blown away by how peaceful, even magical, it was on that high road.

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The runner passed me going the other way. He was cooking. It would be an amazing place to run–a good combination of smooth and rugged trails, with a few miles to keep it interesting. Today, however, I was looking for birds. I did not find many. A couple of warblers, a chickadee. I heard a Hermit Thrush calling and then flushed it; it landed close by and I got to check out its reddish tail bobbing.

I heard one bird I didn’t know but it eventually flew off. Bummer. Farther up the trail, however, I heard another one. I left the trail to chase it down and eventually saw it. Scarlet Tanager. Bright red with black wings. A stunner. I listened to it call for a while so I can add that call to my mental audio files. With the tanager and the Baltimore Orioles I saw earlier, I am up to 138 birds I’ve spotted in Chittenden County–only 37 to go to reach my goal of 175 by the end of the year.

I will definitely be back to Niquette State Park. The place is a gem. After Memorial Day it will cost three bucks to get in. Seems like a bargain to me.

Rain Situation

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It isn’t raining at the moment.  Well, maybe it is raining a little, but barely.  The sun is setting and we have that rare light when the bright sun shines under the clouds, coloring them steel gray and blasting the green hills with brightness.  It won’t last long.  The distant mountain tops are bright and I can see that rain falls there, and the shadows are creeping.

It has rained for a couple of days straight.  I planted flower seeds with the children on Tuesday afternoon, before dinner.  Then it rained.  And rained.  It is Friday now, about the same hour we planted the seeds.  Three days of wet.  I think they have gotten enough water to germinate.

I have not needed to uncoil the hose to water the garden.  In fact, I have been afraid that the garden has been getting too much water.  Last summer we had a wet spell that ruined some of our crops, including carrots.  They rotted in the ground.  Nothing I planted is so advanced that it will rot but this rain might keep some seeds from starting as I would like.  We’ll have to see what happens.

A hermit thrush tosses out its flutey voice over the wet trees behind the house.   It is an unassuming bird, what you might call an LBJ, a Little Brown Jobber, so similar to so many other bland birds.  Its voice, however, stops me at times.  Milton and Shakespeare and all those other dead English bards wrote about the nightingale, another thrush, whose voice trilled through the woods with sweetness.  I am sure they would have written their odes to the hermit thrush had they lived in Vermont.

We will likely get more rain showers over the next couple of days, but I am hoping the sun will come out to feed the new leaves on our squash plants and to warm the soil so the flowers will grow.  But that won’t happen until tomorrow.  Right now the land quiets.  The air is still, filled with moisture, heavy.  A robin adds to the thrush’s song.  Spring peepers and wood frogs sing out from the pond over the hill.  The light grows grayer.

It is not raining, but the rain has set the scene for a perfect early evening in spring.  Time to slide on some boots and head out there to smell it and feel it.