The season is changing. Be on the lookout for these signs of fall's arrival
Were you a fish at this time of year, your appetite would be increasing as daylight gradually waned. Were you a nut – let’s say a hickory nut – your husk would be hardening from green to brown.
Were you the planet Mars, you’d be keeping company with Sagittarius, shining through nights that grow cooler by degree.
Were you just yourself, a person sensitive to leaves falling and pumpkins ripening, summer’s inevitable departure would have you wandering about watching change.
Changes this month begin subtly and are easily overlooked. After all, we just had a heat wave. Doesn’t summer continue forever?
To keep reality in mind, I suggest starting your daily walk saying, “I’ll bet the thorn apples are ripe by now,” or “I think I’ll count barn swallows today; maybe they’ve all flown south.”
This attitude of seasonal anticipation is what one needs in September. Adopt it and you’ll find change abundant.
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Beer! Beer! Loud nasal calls filter down from on high. Nighthawks swoop above rooftops, their boomerang-shaped wings carving space like so many black scythes. Look up and count them. A dozen, but not nearly as many as decades ago. As with so many species, nighthawks have declined. These birds overhead represent odds-beating survivors, convening for autumn migration. By mid-September our skies will not ring with their calls. They’ll be gone, South America bound.
Fish will stay here. I watch snouts breaking water. Trout are inhaling ants whose footing must have slipped upstream. Now in the water, these insects have become protein rafts bobbing in surface film. Sip. They disappear, gone toward keeping fish fat for fall.
The trout seem unwary, feeding in broad daylight. They sense nights will grow cooler, dragging water temperatures down. Concurrently, days will grow shorter. As opposed to mid-summer, high noon becomes prime feeding time.
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As for the bird feeder, stick-around species show up to discover the buffet has opened. Chickadees arrive first. When they do, as transpires every year at this time, I inquire as to which ones are parents. And which are upstarts of the year. Who remembers last winter? Who was unheard of then, a gleam in some chickadee’s eye? The birds aren’t saying. They buzz about, each of them bright-eyed and equally ageless.
In the woods, a pitter-patter suggests raindrops on summer foliage. Small black cherries are falling. They must be some missed when cedar waxwings perched here last week, gulping what I thought was every last one.
There go waxwings again, flying just over the treetops in a small ragged band. Is it coincidence they’re flying toward the southern horizon, or will they be gone for the year by tomorrow?
Other flocks, too, foretell seasonal changes. Starlings wheel about, dense and synchronous, in flocks too large to count. Hundreds perch on telephone lines. Others waddle about on lawns below, intent on spearing grubs.
Over there a red maple is turning. Over there hang tomatoes, ready to lay down their lives for sauce. Over there, if you look, waits October, a change or two away.
E-mail Rick at rmarsi@stny.rr.com
This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Signs of fall in NY: How birds, fish and plants mark the season
