The Creatures of Autumn

Fall migration has been going on for some time now, but the birds that spend the winter here have started arriving just within the last week. The white-crowned sparrows are now busily rooting around the oleanders for seeds. They will sing all winter, cheerfully lighting up the short days. The Swainson’s hawks have almost all gone-we still have a lingering two or three that seem to be juveniles, crying pitifully in the morning-and the red-tailed hawks are coming in to take their places, down from the foothills for the winter.

Yesterday I went with some friends west to Bodega Bay, birding. The promise of eastern warblers in the trees of Owl Canyon along with the chance to see my mother lured me out of bed at 5:00 am (Numenius sensibly declined). We didn’t see many warblers, but another birder alerted us to large numbers of warblers in Point Reyes to the south. We all made our way there and were rewarded with an extraordinary number of eastern vagrants; I was able to see most of them even with my limited mobility. (Things are looking up in this department: I got the final insert out of my boot this morning, and am now able to walk almost normally instead of lurching about like a drunken sailor.) There was a nip in the air, well described by Lisa of Field Notes.

The birds remind us that the light is waning. It’s time to think about different dinners, different clothes. To think about abundance and to be grateful. I always, somehow, prefer this season to spring.

By the way, the next joint Ecotone topic will be Ancestral Place (October 1). Everyone is invited to write something about this and post an excerpt and link to it on the wiki.