-
Nighttime Visitor
We had a visitor in our suburban yard the other night. Though we slept through it all, a bear is surely the one who bent our bird feeder pole to the ground, ripped off the suet cage, and feasted on sunflower seeds and suet.
We left it in disarray for the day and the following night, despite the disorientation of the offended birds. It’s back up now and we’ve had no return visits. Hopefully the culprit will be in hibernation before too long!
-
Muted colors of late fall
-
Chipmunk
-
Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca: October
-
Tanglewood Trails
We hustled through our schoolwork in the morning and drove to the Tanglewood Nature Center in Elmira yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we took the trail up to an overlook over the Chemung River Valley.
We spotted two redtails circling over the river, but by the time I got my camera back out, they were high above us.
We ate our lunch there, and I enjoyed reading about Mark Twain’s thoughts on such an experience, posted nearby:
On the way back down we paused at this lower point, and a juvenile eagle soared past at eye level. No pics — but a grand sight.
Of course there were many beautiful perspectives on the trail. We passed through yellow sections, red sections, and conifer sections. I was partial to the golden yesterday — even though “nothing gold can stay.”
The reds were lovely too.
I commented on these bi-colored yellow/red maple leaves, and the kids proceeded to gather specimens.
There were apple trees, and faded pearl crescent butterflies.
We enjoyed the many fossils seen along the trail, too.
When we got back to the bottom, we rested a bit…
…and saw several bluebirds. They were perching in a walnut tree, then swooping down to hawk insects near the ground. It’s always a treat to see our state bird.
I was surprised to see red-winged blackbirds too, plucking and eating the keys from this tree.
On the whole it was a grand way to drink in the sights and smells of autumn.
-
Chickadees
We were looking for warblers, but these chickadees stole the show on a walk last week. They were plucking these fruits, and trying to hold onto them with their toes and devour them with their beaks.They dropped many prizes, and the plops were like rain on the dry leaves.
They are great little acrobats, and they earned every delicious bit.
-
Brown Thrasher
I tried numerous times to capture a photo of this thrasher in the springtime, but it was too elusive. Who would have guessed that in the fall — the silent season, when the bird isn’t calling attention to itself — it would pose for me?
Thank you, Friend Thrasher.
Also saw some kinglets…
…an ovenbird…
and, across the street, some suburban deer.
This one begs for a word bubble…
-
Bittersweet
Fall is filled with a sense of foreboding. It precedes the cold, colorless season, and I dread that.
Yet I also love the fall! It sure looks amazing here in the Northeast.
-
Another migrant hummer
This tiny visitor was as interested in us as we were in her.
-
Oblivious
Yesterday, trying to create a new email address, I stumbled upon my gmail account — the one through which Feedburner sends out the emails of posts on this blog. I discovered a number of emails from readers, responding to different posts over the last year. Presumably they were sent by simply hitting “reply” to the blog posts — something I didn’t realize could be done.
It was a great encouragement to me to read these emails. I’m very grateful to the readers who have been so appreciative of my attempts to document my family’s nature sightings! Thank you!
I was also very embarrassed not to have responded to those emails. I haven’t realized my gmail account was accumulating them; the address I check regularly, and which sends me notification when comments are made on the blog, is the one I have listed in my sidebar here.
I’ll be sure to check my gmail account more than once a year in the future! Please accept my apology if you are someone who has sent some kind words my way and received only silence.
Fledgling osprey, Moss Lake — 8/13
