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Dead garden fun
Our garden is still producing beans, broccoli and tomatoes. But they aren’t worth picking anymore. It’s officially past its prime, and I took down the fence a couple of weeks ago to let the critters have at it.
It’s fun to see the birds fluttering around among the ragged sunflowers, eating seeds and bugs. But as it turns out, my daughters managed to have some fun out there too.
This bunny is, I believe, the same one that inspired the fence in the first place. He looks like a gangly adolescent now, and I got a few photos from the kitchen window at dusk the other night of him giving himself fully to the task of raiding the pole beans. I’m glad he’s still around.
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Mrs. Hummer
This female hummingbird has been hanging around for awhile, chasing away other hummers who venture too near. She’s recognizable because she’s on the big side, with a little dark fleck on her breast.
This morning, she was actually on the feeder when we came out to breakfast. We think she spent the night there, in torpor, and was just coming out of it — just sitting there, fluttering her wings occasionally, and then finally taking a drink.
She flew away, and I think it may be the last time we see her.
Fascinating to read here and here about both torpor and migration. Her departure for the south seems a little late, but I wish her a happy journey.
She was quickly replaced by another female today, more skittish and slender — probably a migrant passing through.
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Fall exploring
The girls, the dog, and I had a great walk today. Our dog, we recently learned, has a tumor in her spleen, and the doctor speculates that she has perhaps 2-6 months to live. We are grieving, but trying to give her good quality of life in the time we have. She’s always loved a good woodland explore.
It was a brilliant, clear day, cool and comfortable. Here a few of the sights we took in.
New York Aster 
Pay no attention to that munk behind the curtain… 
See ya! 
Black-throated green warbler, non-breeding plumage 
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Sabbath
Wendell Berry has a whole series of poems called Sabbaths. Accumulated over several decades, they represent his forays into the woods on Sundays — not every Sunday, but a portion of them. Usually we’re in church, but today we went into the woods instead. There is a particular kind of rest, a particular settling and composure, in the solitude of a walk in that setting.The first “wildlife” sighting happened before we even got out of the house: this Carolina wren, who had apparently spent the night in our garage. It was a confident little bird. Maybe it enjoyed the warmth, and whatever bugs it found on the window sills. But when we opened the doors, it paused only to give us a considering glance before flying gracefully away.
Off to the woods, on a morning blanketed in mist.
The moisture in the air made certain usually hidden things visible.
We saw a few deer, but for the most part, it was a time to look closely at the microworlds of mosses and bracket fungus, ferns in their fall stripes, woodpecker work and chipmunks.
My husband was surrounded at one point by small, alarmed rodents, filling the woods with their squeaking.
We were near this stream, a favorite spot, when the sun came out.
It’s interesting to me that although our bird feeding station at home was swarming with birds, the ones in the woods take longer to get up and moving. Maybe they wait for their prey to wake up — not being a welfare state, like our back yard. There were quite a few cardinals, chickadees, robins, nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers, cedar waxwings, Eastern towhees and other birds coming alive and chattering in the trees as we came back out. The gnats were certainly awake as well.
At last — all things come to her who waits — I saw a Tennessee warbler, who scolded me roundly and flew away.
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Backyard Birds of Early Fall
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Signs of fall
Leaves are beginning to crackle underfoot. There is still a green canopy overhead, but the smell of fall is in the air, and there was a freeze warning last night.
The girls and I descended into this lovely gorge for a new perspective on a familiar walk yesterday. We saw this fellow literally “chilling out,” along with several of his friends.
His landlubber pals, tiny toads, were everywhere along the trail, too.
It seems like the summer flew by. I hope to drink in the autumn more fully before it slips away.
There are always surprises if we’re looking.
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Incomparable Artist
I have stood in the mist of Iguacu Falls in Brazil as gorgeous tropical butterflies, winged bearers of abstract art, landed on my arms to lap up the moisture. I have crouched beside a bay in Alaska as a pod of feeding beluga whales made shiny crescents of silver in unison against the dark green water. I have sat under a baobab tree in Kenya as giraffes loped effortlessly under sunset clouds and a line of half a million wildebeest marched single file across a plain. Above the Arctic Circle, I have watched a herd of musk oxen gather in a circle like Conestoga wagons to protect the mothers and their young (who in wintertime must adjust to a 130 degree drop in temperature at birth). I have also sat in hot classrooms and listened to theology professors drone on about the defining qualities of the deity — omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc. Can the One who created this glorious world be reduced to such abstractions? Should we not start with the most obvious fact of existence, that whoever is responsible is a fierce and incomparable artist beside whom all human achievement and creativity dwindle as child’s play? (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church)
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Redstarts
We’ve had what I believe to be a female redstart around our yard this summer. Recently she was traveling up the trees beside the driveway with a whole band of others. I never did see a male, but I assume the birds with her were juvies. They certainly acted like it — including the one who seriously considered landing on my head.
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Ferd’s Bog
The walk into Ferd’s Bog, where I heard the winter wren, has a primeval feel. It was very quiet, though as we approached the bog itself, we heard a few bush-dwellers rustling about. This one, a hermit thrush (I think), posed so nicely my photo should be better than it is.
On to the bog, traversed by a boardwalk. Earlier in the summer, the grass is red with pitcher plants. Not so much so in August.
Cedar waxwings were everywhere, making their high-pitched noises that, I’ve read, are sometimes too high for the human ear to pick up.
The walk out is equally beautiful, of course, though it seemed all new because we were moving in a different direction.
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Mystery solved
In 2011, I heard a bird song in the Adirondacks that I couldn’t identify. This year I heard it again. Finally it occurred to me to ask the folks over at Cornell Lab. I sent them a link to some video clips I posted of the song on my other blog, and they identified the bird for me. It’s a winter wren!
Here is some video of a singing winter wren over at YouTube. I’m so glad that next time I hear the bird, I’ll know what to look for!
