Obligatory foliage pictures

Autumn is almost a week old and the fall color palette is slowly filling in. Here and there single trees or even branches blaze red or orange against a muted background. Winds blow in a shifting landscape of weather.

A couple hours after the autumnal equinox, I took another walk from work. I was feeling the need to stretch my legs and think, so instead of a leisurely meander along the shore I headed out for the denser forest at the far end of the pond. The braver painted turtles craned their necks to watch me walk by.

A bevy of chipping cardinals cheered up the undergrowth of young forest along the trail. The emphatic song of a phoebe rang out over the pond, as if he were preparing to renest rather than to head south of the Mason-Dixon line. Human noise from either a radio or some sort of carnival also carried from the same direction. The distance distorted the original words and washed them of meaning.

Where the trees became older, a doe stood at the side of the trail. When I stopped, she first started toward me very purposefully before veering away. While keeping an eye on me, she picked up an oak branch bristling with large green leaves. One by one they disappeared down her gullet as the rest of the foliage shuddered. She continued into deeper brush and had left no trace by the time a middle-aged human couple passed by.

I entered the inner sanctum of the older forest and slowed. The canopy above was still vibrantly green, the color enhanced by an earlier soaking rain. The leaf litter was sparse from a summer of decomposition. Here and there were healthy patches of poison ivy, grass, and ferns just beginning to yellow. Beech drops added brush strokes of ochre. A squirrel carried an acorn across the trail and back onto the uneven forest floor. It traversed a mostly straight path, veering twice to travel the expressways provided by fallen logs.

A chipmunk crouched at the apex of a different converging highway of fallen branches. It was continuously calling “chup” in a voice that originally had me looking for a frog rather than a mammal. I disturbed it and it disappeared with a soft stream of chittering, but as I walked away I could hear the chupping resume behind me. In a few minutes I encountered another chipmunk chupping from where it perched on the edge of a beech log.

I assumed these two were males declaring territories, the pattern most familiar to me from birdwatching. Later I read that this continuous calling can function like an air raid siren warning of aerial predators. I wish I'd known to look up for hawks. Sometimes it feels like there's so much to learn, and I only sense part of the picture, distorted like the radio noise. We humans can barely even smell, yet so much mammal and even insect communication is olfactory.

I was nearing the end of my break by the time I stepped onto the boardwalk that led back to work. I passed a different middle-aged couple with binoculars pointed way up into the tree tops. At least one warbler danced a tango with branch tips as it foraged for insects. I didn't have time to identify the species or search for more, which would have been vexing if I was a true birder. For me, I saw enough for it to be evocative of fall migration in a bird sanctuary.

 

The earth is hurtling towards that point in its orbit where long days tip towards long nights. Summer will turn to autumn in human terms, but other species experience more gradual transitions. Last week at work, I took a walk with a late summer score on a day cooled by intermittent clouds. The forest buzzed with cicadas. Foraging birds chipped among branches and startled chipmunks panicked in streams of high-pitched chirps. I passed underneath a worried gray squirrel. It twitched its tail while incessantly calling out a raspy alarm. When I returned ten minutes later, the squirrel was still calling and had even acquired a curious catbird who screeched replies from the underbrush.

I approached the pond and triggered a medley of soft ker-plinks. Rows of painted turtles lined logs near shore in their quest to soak up solar energy. I continued to watch as the turtles drained away. Singly or in groups they lost their nerve and slipped under the water. One little turtle skidded across a lily pad before disappearing.

 

The bullfrogs were much braver, or at least trusted in their camouflage. I saw them everywhere once I began looking - like frog statues tucked in green water among sticks and lily pads or up on shaded bits of shore. The waning solar energy will eventually cause both species to seek shelter on the bottom of the pond.

 

 

It looked as if a piece of bird dropping had formed a miniature snake head on one end. We had just exited the garden when I noticed the caterpillar glistening on a leaf like the bird poop which it resembled.

Two year-old Daughter was in my arms yet again, her insistent “Up!” having reminded me that humans are a species with high parental investment. She asked me if she could touch the caterpillar (no, I didn't trust her fine motor skills not to squish it), and whether it was “chilling out” (yes, I supposed so, although I'm ambivalent about the slang she's picked up from my casual speech). Still, I couldn't resist prodding the little thing with a dried leaf. Little orange prongs flicked out like a forked tongue.

Given nature's inordinate fondness for beetles and other six-legged beings, my insect ID books only cover a small part of the diversity surrounding us. Fortunately this species was one of the handful of caterpillars pictured in my butterfly book. One phase of the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar resembles excrement, but in the next phase its snake head becomes useful. By now it has probably rolled itself into a leaf where it's lurking like a tiny green snake.

This is a good time of year to appreciate our arthropod neighbors before the turning seasons decimate their numbers. We still have a post-it note warning “Spider!” at our front door, where a beefy red spider had been making magnificent webs across the door frame every night before giving up and moving elsewhere. The yellow jackets living next to my mother-in-law's porch enter and leave their underground nest in a steady stream. Woollybears crawl through the grass and leaves on inscrutable errands, preparing to spend the winter in a frozen state. Daughter can touch these, and enjoy the simple childhood pleasure of watching them curl into bristly doughnuts. My own fond memories are colored by their tendency to pee when picked up by clumsy hands.

Cultural connections

Introduced honey bee on a native goldenrod.

Native grey catbird on an introduced buckthorn.

Chipmunk scavenging fungi from a mulched nature trail.

Rose-breasted grosbeak on a window feeder

The next generation of birds has taken wing. Yesterday the rose-breasted grosbeak that visits our window feeder brought, or at least led, two juveniles to our backyard. At least one was a male, dashing in browns rather than the black suit of his father. Dad chased his future rival a couple times before they all flew away.

Young birds were everywhere when I jogged this morning. A heavily-spotted juvenile robin stared at me from a shrub. I passed flocks of blackbirds that have lost the anchors of their nests and now dot fields, trees, and power lines. Individual birds drained off into the air as I ran, like water dripping at cross-purposes with gravity. Swallow families made a long row on a power line. One blackbird industriously harassed a red-tailed hawk, which the perching hawk did not deign to notice, before returning to a group.

Down the road, a second adult red-tail on a different utility pole had an apprentice, a juvenile perched just below. Its colors were muted so that the overall impression was shades of gray rather than the rusty tint of its parents. These hawks were probably searching for a mammal, but an unwary bird always makes a nice snack. Young birds tend to be more clumsy and less wary than their elders. My casual observation has been that they seem more likely to be killed by cars or by hitting windows.

Cats lurk along the edges of the morning, another trap for the careless. One pudgy tabby crouched in a ditch staring at me, trying out the “you don't see me” Jedi mind trick. One “cat” became a gray fox trotting down a dirt road lined by trees. The silvery fur and black striped tail of this native canine was a nice treat for me, but to the birds it's just another possible predator.

Just playing.

I was still groggy from bed, but I have to admit it wasn't very early. The Virginia opossum must have been making a late morning of it. I had just started drinking coffee when I took the dogs out. Ivy was loose and Bear was leashed. It took me a second to realize that the large, gray fur ball Ivy found in the woods was not a cat, and then it took me a second too late to realize that getting close enough to grab Ivy meant Bear was close enough to grab the possum. Fortunately his grip was weak and when he tried to shift it, I was able to drag him back inside. After a few barks of tough talk, Ivy was happy to follow. We left the body slumped in the driveway.


The possum, while far less picturesque than the jumping mouse, looked just as convincingly dead. I grabbed my camera and returned without the dogs. “Don't mind the paparazzi,” I murmured as I snapped pictures from several angles. It twitched its lips a couple times to bare sharp teeth, suggesting that it had a few other defenses in case I didn't leave the poor corpse alone.


Possums seem to me like beasts that have lumbered out of the Mesozoic era, or at least The Princess Bride. Primitive traits, like primitive special effects, aren't always a hindrance. Possums make up for what they lack in agility and brain size by excelling at appearing unappetizing.


We all watched the heap of possum through a window. After a few minutes, it blinked, then raised its head to look around. The entire body rose from the dead and it beat a surprisingly hasty retreat to the depths of the wood shed beside the house. I marveled at its cunning, however innate.


After all, I long ago accepted that if my survival required me to be strong, fast, and above all quick-witted, I probably wouldn't still be here.

Bitter nightshade

 In the buildup to summer, green takes center stage, but other colors still lurk in the scenery.

Blue flag iris

Cedar waxwing on cherry tree

Waxwing pair that was passing cherries back and forth to strengthen their bond.

Reading the landscape

We’ve banned our dog Bear roaming free because of a chicken fetish, but on a recent morning he burst through the door and became a black streak moving through the woods. I deposited the toddler with Mama and gave chase. Occasionally I’d glimpse him joyfully racing back and forth through the browns and dark greens. When I finally caught up with him, he was standing over a dead buck sporting a bullet wound.

Slowly and carefully I approached, leashed him, and pulled him away. He seemed too overwhelmed by the munificence of the universe to protest as I took it away. That seems like an interesting metaphor, but for what I’m not quite sure.

Later, as I watched a downy woodpecker bob and dart around a spruce tree, I thought about the different ways we read the landscape. As a descendent of fruit-seeking primates, my eyes are drawn to remnants of color. As a domesticated human, my needs are more emotional than physical. I see beauty in the patterns made by the exposed roots of a tip-up, where a rabbit would see shelter from threats like our dogs. I can’t hear if insects are active beneath tree bark like the woodpecker can. Farther on I find piles of discarded spruce cones, their bracts closed tight but empty of seeds underneath. Around the tree trunk is a thick pile of bracts and stripped cones. I couldn’t have known that these had had seeds while the others were a waste of time just by smell, like the squirrels did.

The day was cool and overcast, with a hint of rain that never managed to fall. Distant crows cawed and squirrels rattled. Humanity moved about in the background noises of cars and planes. It was mid-day, but owls briefly sang their melancholy songs, contributing to a feeling of fading light. If humans had better senses or if the temperatures were much higher, the whole scene would have been permeated with an odor of death. Not being a scavenger, that would not be a joyous thing for me.

Water in the woods