Autumn encounters

Recently I walked into the forest during a pause in the insect buzz. Wind rustled among branches, a thin layer of leaves crunched underfoot, and, like in every other woods I’ve been in lately, a pewee was singing. I moved through one area where the brown structures of blue cohosh lay about in various states of collapse, sometimes topped with brilliant blue berries. Some poison ivy leaves were beginning to turn yellow.

I came upon a juvenile great horned owl screeching amid a chorus of chickadee chips. Perhaps because they’re used to the safety of a flock, chickadees are the self-appointed harassers of raptors. The irritated owl puffed up and shook before flapping to another perch, which excited the chickadees to chip faster and call “chickadee-dee-dee” in alarm. From the new branch, the owl turned its head backwards, seeming to contemplate whether I was also following it, and then scanned the other direction before flying out of sight. An oriole rattled from a different tree, where two of them graced the canopy with a splash of tropical color. As they flew off one sang the song that had been a familiar refrain in the yard earlier in the summer.



Mushrooms are surprisingly scarce, perhaps due to our water deficit. A few hide in the shadow of logs, or in other out of the way places. More striking are all the funnel webs propped against trees and leading down into crevices. Their makers were present earlier in the season, although the spiders’ creations were less noticeable then. In contrast, a new generation of carpenter bees is emerging, sort of a second installment for the year. Our dog Ivy scratched at the base of an old stump which may have had a tunnel, because when she left a couple of carpenter bees trundled out to investigate the damage while a third flew a low perimeter.



The one thing disturbing my peace was wariness towards a different stinging insect. I came across several solitary yellow jackets moving low to the ground, which made me anxiously glance around for more that might indicate a ground nest. When I used to work in field biology, this was the time of year we would manage to disturb a few nests. No one would notice until several yellow jackets were in place to attack with coordinated stinging. Like the hornets, the various species called yellow jackets grow their colonies from a single founder to hundreds of individuals over the course of the warm season. In a few months most will be dead, survived only by the new queens. It’s a sacrifice to the harshness of a northern winter, like the loss of the leaves in the canopy, or the above ground matter of perennial flowers.