Yesterday, the raven watched the wind rise across the western hills.  The crows in their discontent circled below him, before leaving for the pines.  From where he sat, unrivalled, he could see east as far as Avon Mountain, some 15 miles; south as far as the horizon line would bend; north up the valley to Massachusetts; west to the slowly rising hills of the Berkshires, as far as Norfolk, another twenty miles.

He was, of course, sitting at the very top of the greatest of the Norway spruces, some 109-110 feet tall.  That the tree sways like a ship’s mast doesn’t seem to bother the birds.  It is a favored perch for the crows, but when the raven is there he is utterly unmistakable.  Much too big to be a crow, he (or she) is also a slightly different black, somehow deeper or richer in color.

Someday that tree will fail.  Repeatedly struck by lightning, it also bears the full brunt of the wind.  Its top thirty feet, where it is fully exposed above the other Norways, is thin and ragged, as would be expected in a tree of that age and height in that location.  But for the meantime, the birds will watch the sun.