I ventured to town the day after Thanksgiving, something I generally try to avoid every year. Like the morning after the first major snowstorm, the world had been transformed overnight. Except the agents of transformation are bows and santas instead of snowflakes. After all, the most important harvest of the modern economy is holiday spending.

Despite the proliferation of winter festival imagery, the landscape is still dressed for late fall. Sun pierces the clouds and throws naked trees into relief against a dark background. These knobby giants hulk over still green fields. Snow streaks nearly invisible through the air, not a hint of white on the ground.

A different harvest is in progress as the second weekend of the regular deer season comes to an end. Men with guns ride around in pickup trucks or stalk along treelines. Shot booms randomly in the surrounding landscape. We pass homesteads with deer dangling from trees in the yard. Elsewhere a deer lies slumped in a gravel parking lot – a reminder of the year-round sacrifice to that American idol the automobile.

The younger beech trees have retained their leaves, giving the forest a bronze undercoat that shivers in the wind. The bird community has shifted to its winter assemblage. Juncos are dark smudges that dart among clumps of goldenrod now topped by wool.

There are still glimpses of bright color among the winter birds. A flicker exposes the yellow underside of his tail to me as it displaces a downy woodpecker from a tree trunk. A male golden-crowned kinglet flits by, giving us a flash of orange and yellow as we walk the dogs. A closer look at cedar waxwings decorating a small tree reveals bright yellow tail tips. They create a design that changes as birds come in, shift branches, and leave with heartbeat like regularity. Occasionally they pluck at dangling grapes as if nibbling on hors d’oeuvres.

Blue jays and cardinals are the showiest, yet even they are a bit lackluster when the sky is thick and heavy with clouds. Chickadees and titmice make themselves noticeable despite wearing the same gray color scheme year-round. They gather in big chattering groups that attract hangers-on interested in food and safety. Usually a pair of white-breasted nuthatches will be working their way down a tree among them. Other common sights are downy woodpeckers and maybe a brown creeper.

This morning snow filled the air and left a light dusting that melted as the day progressed. Soon we’ll get our first real snowfall that will blanket the ground and bring out the colors. The birds will seem more festive on my walks, and life will be a little harder for them.

Summer's empire falling down

Pokeweed appears conquered by frost, although next year's growth is safe underground and locked in seeds.


Cattail fluff topped with ice crystals.

The sky has been clear for several days, which means the land soaks up the sun’s heat but has no insulating clouds to hold it. The other morning I walked the dogs to the end of the driveway through a landscape under the thrall of frost. The grassy fields beyond our woods were painted bluish-green while dried goldenrods and asters had turned amber. These scenes often make me think of my mom’s heirloom ornaments made of frosted glass.





I took an hour to walk around the pond before work. Some of the smaller pools of water had a fragile top layer of ice, but the mass of the pond keeps the temperature more stable and less susceptible to the whims of the air. A muskrat plopped into the water as I passed by. It paddled out a little ways, making a hasty wake in the calm surface. Farther down the shore it climbed up beside another muskrat, pausing to shake water from its fur. They huddled next to each other, taking turns slicking water-resistant oil through their coat. The pond was cold to my touch and not appealing to this naked primate. It will only steadily lose heat even though the muskrats will need to forage through it all winter.



A robin sat at the top of a tree, feathers puffed out. An alder with leaves still green was graced with ice, but next year’s leaves are snug in their protective buds. The clear sky let the sun penetrate the canopy of branches. Thick vegetation which had retained some warmth in earlier hours now held in the cold air, making shadows of frost. Elsewhere leaves glistened with moisture. Evergreen leaves, such as spruce needles and the leaves of a widespread fern with the prosaic name polypody, control the damage of ice and retain their vibrant green through the melt. Others turn waxy due to ice crystals which had broken through cell walls and then melted away. Everyday it seems more of the grass at the end of our driveway dies.

More fall sights

Witch hazel


Beech leaves which may remain up all winter.


Not all that's green is fading.


Reminder of the summer.

Fall sights

One morning I lingered outside work among flocking birds. Red-winged blackbirds clucked, American robins chuckled, and blue jays voiced their boastful calls of “Jay jay!” All three species are not stereotypical migrants, in that some of the population linger in our area all winter. Most of the blue jays stay. The robins that stay will remain restless as they search for high concentrations of the berries that are their main winter food source.

Berries abound. Nearby trees and invasive shrubs have grown up in old fields. Red honeysuckle berries dot the brushy areas. Taller buckthorns arch over parts of the path, their branches encrusted with black berries. Back home I’ve been noticing maple-leafed viburnum with their black berries and the beaten-down but not yet broken pokeweeds thick with clusters of dark purple fruit.

It’s the time of year I can see that I’ve moved to a different stand in the forest by looking down. At the end of the driveway there are the remains of an old homestead and aspen have grown up in what may have been land cleared by its owner. At the first bend in our driveway, deeply lobed oak leaves replace the rounded aspen leaves, oak being more-shade tolerant, where the forest was once logged but probably not completely cleared.

This past week the leaves have been a study in variation, genetic and microclimatic. All the trees have been performing complicated equations involving day-length, temperature, and water loss and coming up with different results. Some beech trees still resemble striped frozen treats from my childhood – an inner halo of green shades into yellow and an outer layer of orange. Many of the more exposed trees stand bare, especially after this last bout of windy weather. The flush of witch hazel blooms seem showier with this more subdued background.

On a recent sunny day, my mother-in-law’s walls were flush with ladybugs. They have descended on our houses, looking for winter shelter. The pets treat them like little toys, although Ivy has trouble with them because she can’t aim for them and have her nose close enough to sniff them at the same time. Sometimes I wonder if our heated homes, far more numerous and widespread than the longhouses of just a few hundred years ago, provide winter habitat for insects which were previously excluded from our region. Of course many insects already wintered in crevices or underground where the temperature was more moderated.

This is the last we’ll see of some creatures for a few months. Red dragonflies were still patrolling the boardwalks near work last week. There was even a pair joined abdomen to head whose eggs will presumably overwinter. Chipmunks dart about the woods, taunting our dogs with their chirps. It might be nice not to be jerked about when a chipmunk notices me walking Bear and vice versa, but the novelty will wear off long before they rouse from hibernation.