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Amazing
The girls and I watched this hawk hunting for awhile at Brick Pond today. He saw us too. (From here on out I’m calling it “he,” because “it” seems not quite right…)
Older Daughter showed great patience. She wanted to see him take off, or pounce on something. Eventually her patience paid off; he crossed the water and we lost sight of him — till he flew into a tree on our side, about five feet from us.
He sat there through a battery change in my camera, and my daughters’ whispered exultation. Then he pounced on a mouse right in front of us, and took it to a tree next to our car. It was as if he wanted his activities documented.
He polished off the mouse in about 3 minutes. I thought of the line from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “There’s nothing better than fish that were alive a half hour ago, and came out of the pan half a minute ago.” But in this case, it’s “There’s nothing better than a mouse that was alive a minute ago, and is now in my crop.”
Then he wiped his beak and jumped handily to a post-meal perch.
It was unusual… I remember watching a documentary about Pale Male, and how close people would come to the Central Park hawks — and how foolish that was. But in any case we weren’t harmed; he came to us, rather than vice versa. And there were no visible injuries, and no problems with his hunting ability — that’s for sure.
We left him looking regal in the waning sunlight.
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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater…
…was a squirrel.
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Feeder visitors
Pine siskin We’ve had a number of these siskins frequenting our sunflower and nyjer feeders. They look like streaky goldfinches.
They’re willing and able to carve out some space among the goldfinches.
I glanced out and saw what looked like a goldfinch on steroids, and it turned out to be an evening grosbeak — three of them, actually, apparently passing through. We are used to rose-breasted grosbeaks in the summer here, but it was a treat to see these cousins.
Evening grosbeak 
Other transients include the white-throated sparrows that scratch around below the feeders, ground-feeding.
They’re seldom still, and our windows aren’t the cleanest. I love these plump sparrows, though.
We’ve had red-breasted nuthatches come through too — gorgeous little birds that I never saw before this year. And we have our usual crowd of cardinals, chickadees and titmice, house finches and goldfinches. Mourning doves and bluejays try to get their share too, making a big mess for the ground feeders to clean up.
Then there are the least welcome visitors.
Hmmmm…. 
Ready, set… 
GO! -
Autumn sights
We’re past the peak for fall color, and as the season mellows, other quieter beauties emerge.
November is coming, when Northeasterners hunker down for the long winter’s deprivation of color. I like to prepare myself with John Updike’s poem about November in A Child’s Calendar:
The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The loss of her
Departed leaves.The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain
Loveliness –The beauty of the bone.
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Fall Redtail
I was driving home from an early morning walk, feeling a little disappointed that I hadn’t seen any warblers, when a large, light-colored hawk swooshed up from one side of the road and landed in a tree on the other side. I think it’s a female, because it was quite large — especially with those feathers fluffed out for warmth. It’s a young redtail with a first-year tail, and I watched for awhile as it hunted.
Such concentration. I never saw it catch anything, but I wished it the best. Beautiful, powerful bird.
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Scavenger Hunt
Yesterday we finished our book work early, so we took a woodland scavenger hunt from this book and headed out into a sunny fall day to see what we could see.
The first task was to find “something older than yourself.” Not too difficult in a forest! There were numerous good-sized trees around, as well as plenty of snags and blow-downs.
How about “something smaller than your thumb”? The blooms on this white flower (yarrow?), one of the few hardies to have withstood the recent frost, fits the bill.
Older Daughter also thought of berries, which a flock of migrating robins were munching on.
Along with the dragonflies, white-throated sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers and chickadees, the robins satisfy the third challenge: “something that flies.”
I saw the first robin of spring at this preserve, and I’m guessing these may be the last robins of fall. All were dull-colored, and travelling together in a group. At one point we counted seven in the same bush — though it was hard to get a clear view. They flapped and fluttered and clucked and shook the leaves, and generally gave every impression of wary and purposeful activity.
Next comes “something taller than you.” Easy enough: trees, as well as the hillside.
“Something that needs air.” Hmm. It would be harder to find something that doesn’t need air! How about humans for this one?
“Something younger than yourself.” Virtually all the leaves, dying in a blaze of glory after a few months…
“Something that makes you laugh.”
This guy squealed and ran from my daughters, only to find himself a yard from me before freezing in horrified indecision.
“Something that is important.” Water…
“Something that you have never seen before.” A new path, though I have no pics. It delighted us all.
“Something with a smell.” Again, no pics, but autumn has a smell all its own. I suppose it must be decay, but I think of it simply as “fall smell.”
Last, “something with spots.”
Gorgeous day, satisfying sights, time together.
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October’s bright blue weather
This morning it was in the mid-twenties after the first serious frost. The beauty of the woods warranted quoting a line from this poem in my title. The only line I dispute is the one about “leaves sinking noiselessly.” They rattle ceaselessly, actually, making it sound like the woods are trying to flutter up and away en masse before the snow falls.
The yellow-rumped warblers were coming through, snatching bugs from leaves and branches.
I heard a whole flock of crows sounding the alarm about something, but aside from the warblers and a few chickadees, I didn’t see much.
I investigated a trail I haven’t walked in awhile and discovered it was almost impassable because of the uprooted trees, courtesy of a strong storm maybe a month ago. It was interesting to try to trace the path of one particularly large oak that had torn limbs off one tree and knocked over another on its way down. It lived a life of influence — and died the same way.
There’s a certain quality of brightness to the fall sunshine that I look forward to. I think of Wendell Berry’s line of poetry in “Clearing” about vision with “severity at its edge.” That’s what the light reminds me of this season — it makes things starker and reveals the contrasts.
I need the seasons.
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Lunch is served
This morning we counted eight male cardinals at once at our feeder out back. Countless other small birds fluttered around along with them: house finches, goldfinches, female cardinals, nuthatches and chickadees, red bellied and downy woodpeckers. “If a Cooper’s hawk showed up right now, he’d be on overload,” I remarked.
Obligingly, he appeared on the swingset.
He didn’t get anybody while we watched. After snapping these pics, I let Younger Daughter go outside and he startled and flew away.
How can I be so fascinated by both the songbirds and the hawk that hunts them?
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Autumn state of mind
The woods are so much quieter now than they were in the spring and early summer that it’s easy to lose the sense of expectation. But it’s a good exercise in faith to remain attentive; invariably we are rewarded with wonders large and small.
It was a little eerie on a recent walk in Ithaca. My husband and daughters and I were coming to the end of a stroll on an overcast day when our paths intersected with some characteristically cheerful sounding chickadees. My daughter, the bird-whisperer, sounded her chickadee call to attract them, and it seemed they were responding with more and more vocalization. Then we rounded a corner and saw the silent silhouette of a hawk.
No doubt the chickadees were sounding the alarm. It may have been the redtail that haunts Sapsucker Woods, but it seemed a little small for a redtail. My guess is it was a broadwing. It clutched a chipmunk in its talons.
How typical of us humans to think that we were controlling the scene, when all along a life and death drama that had nothing to do with us was playing itself out.
Another hawk has been making unwelcome appearances in our area: a Cooper’s hawk. Our feeder is situated next to an evergreen so that the birds have cover, but I think this hawk is attracted by the busy chatter of the goldfinches and the two or three chipmunks who feed on the ground beneath. We haven’t seen it successfully catch anything yet, but here it is perched in the middle of the food court.
No wonder the chipmunks hide!
See it in the log? I’ve seen some tiny warblers in recent walks in the woods, but few have rewarded me with photo-ops. I did manage to get a shot of this one, tentatively identified as a Nashville warbler.
It was a treat to see this red-eyed vireo feeding with some chickadees, too. Vireos are so much more easy to hear than to see; they are so like the leaves themselves.
The white-throated sparrows are coming through on their way southward. We have four or five of them hanging around our yard this week, but this one was spotted in a nearby preserve.
Last but not least, the deer have been everywhere, and they have actually seemed to pose for me.
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And so it begins
Last year, we got seriously into monarch caterpillar observation. I wrote about it here.
This year, I’ve seen a few caterpillars, but we’ve held off on bringing any home, thinking we’d wait till they get bigger. It makes for easier maintenance. But since we’re seeing far fewer than last year at this time, and since there’s no guarantee the little ones will be there if we wait and go back, I yielded last night to Younger Daughter’s pleas and brought this little fellow home. It’s quite sluggish; I think it may be ready to shed this skin.
*Edited to add: I wrote about the conclusion of this story at my other blog, here and here.
