crows and train flames

I went out looking for a murder of crows this morning (but I would rather call them a shadow of crows or an inking of crows). We don't usually get huge congregations of crows here (we should move to Troy, New York), but wakanomori and the tall one saw many, many of them, on trees on both sides of the road, near here, and I saw them too, on Christmas Eve, and I wanted to go see them again.

So I walked out to look for them very early, and I saw a few crows flying over the field near where they had been roosting, and heard them calling, but they weren't congregating. No murder of crows.

The ones that flew by were flying toward the train tracks at the top of the field, in the woods. A hawk flew that way, too. The sky was very overcast; it was hard to tell whether the sun had come up or not.

Then a train whistle moaned. Beware, beware, I'm coming; stand back. Such a lonely sound. Then, way over across the field, in the trees, there was something like a ghost flame, flickering through the branches, slowly approaching. It was the headlamp for the freight train. The train snaked its way along the field ridge, giving its mournful call.

Some minutes later I crossed those very tracks. They were cold; you'd never know a train had just been by.

ETA Oh! And I nearly forgot! This magnificent photo, which cottonmanifesto took--everyone should see it: Barbed wire with hoar frost barbs on it.