Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Saturday, June 7, 2014
The Great Acorn Drop
It starts slowly at first, a ping here, a pop there. If I didn't know any better, I'd think someone was out there at 5 a.m. target practicing with a BB gun, or popping corn. But those particular events aren't usually accompanied by the frantic rustling of leaves or by loud and aggressive chatter.
It's the annual acorn drop, one of the few times during the year when squirrels and other small critters that cherish these tidbits steer clear of the bird seed in favor of larger more succulent bounty. Their days are spent high in the treetops, chattering away at each other and at anyone or anything that deigns to interfere with the process. They leap from branch to branch like circus acrobats, shaking the acorns off, then rushing back down tree trunks and burying their bounty or storing it away in tree hollows for a time when food will not be as plentiful.
Eastern gray squirrels build two types of dwellings-summer nests made of twigs and leaves and winter dens in the cavities of hardwood trees or in the eaves or attics of houses and other buildings. They mate twice a year, first in the early spring and then again in mid-summer. Once the second litter is born around August or September, the young from the first litter have left the nest and are fending for themselves. Two of these chubby little rascals have lately become regular visitors to my bird feeders, stopping at nothing, not even my presence at the door, to clean out the bowl or the decimate the suet cake. Cheekier than even most adult squirrels, they even go so far as to run up onto the railing when I'm sitting there with my book. They sniff at the air, decide they don't like me, and leave, but never position themselves so far away that they won't see me come inside, giving them another window of opportunity to sneak in for a few more bites of food.
As for the oaks whose bounty temporarily distracts my furry gray friends, the very large ones have been known to produce as many as 10,000 acorns in a single year. Oak trees rarely drop the same number of acorns every year, and this is actually one of their survival techniques. In years that see bumper crops of the capped nuts, called mast years, animals like the gray squirrel and others, such as turkeys, chipmunks, blue jays, deer and bears can't consume them all, and many are left to grow into new trees. Other years, leaner crops attract fewer predators, ultimately leaving enough acorns to take root and sprout. While the reason there are more acorns some years than others remains unclear, but the fact remains that it all balances out in the end, for no matter the number of acorns, there will always be some that will grow into new trees.
What this means in terms of chronology and the seasons is that we are once more well past the half-year mark and on our way toward autumn. Just this morning, I passed a small stand of maple saplings that are already sporting red leaves. Now this could mean some sort of disease or insect infestation, or perhaps the small trees have been deprived of light or are exposed to an overabundance of standing water. In any case, their color startles, for it's too soon to be seeing this now in early August, the last and most benign of the full summer months, the month of crickets and cooler nights, of a changing slant of the light and the scent of fullness in the woods and out-of-the-way places.
There's a new crackling sound in the leaves as the wind moves between them, a new crispness that wasn't there a month ago, their rustle louder as they begin the slow process of releasing their moisture toward their inevitable fall. But summer will persist until the autumnal equinox in September, the month of indecision, of the push/pull between two seasons, when the world as we know it here in the north clings to one yet is inexorably drawn to the other.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
It's the annual acorn drop, one of the few times during the year when squirrels and other small critters that cherish these tidbits steer clear of the bird seed in favor of larger more succulent bounty. Their days are spent high in the treetops, chattering away at each other and at anyone or anything that deigns to interfere with the process. They leap from branch to branch like circus acrobats, shaking the acorns off, then rushing back down tree trunks and burying their bounty or storing it away in tree hollows for a time when food will not be as plentiful.
Eastern gray squirrels build two types of dwellings-summer nests made of twigs and leaves and winter dens in the cavities of hardwood trees or in the eaves or attics of houses and other buildings. They mate twice a year, first in the early spring and then again in mid-summer. Once the second litter is born around August or September, the young from the first litter have left the nest and are fending for themselves. Two of these chubby little rascals have lately become regular visitors to my bird feeders, stopping at nothing, not even my presence at the door, to clean out the bowl or the decimate the suet cake. Cheekier than even most adult squirrels, they even go so far as to run up onto the railing when I'm sitting there with my book. They sniff at the air, decide they don't like me, and leave, but never position themselves so far away that they won't see me come inside, giving them another window of opportunity to sneak in for a few more bites of food.
As for the oaks whose bounty temporarily distracts my furry gray friends, the very large ones have been known to produce as many as 10,000 acorns in a single year. Oak trees rarely drop the same number of acorns every year, and this is actually one of their survival techniques. In years that see bumper crops of the capped nuts, called mast years, animals like the gray squirrel and others, such as turkeys, chipmunks, blue jays, deer and bears can't consume them all, and many are left to grow into new trees. Other years, leaner crops attract fewer predators, ultimately leaving enough acorns to take root and sprout. While the reason there are more acorns some years than others remains unclear, but the fact remains that it all balances out in the end, for no matter the number of acorns, there will always be some that will grow into new trees.
What this means in terms of chronology and the seasons is that we are once more well past the half-year mark and on our way toward autumn. Just this morning, I passed a small stand of maple saplings that are already sporting red leaves. Now this could mean some sort of disease or insect infestation, or perhaps the small trees have been deprived of light or are exposed to an overabundance of standing water. In any case, their color startles, for it's too soon to be seeing this now in early August, the last and most benign of the full summer months, the month of crickets and cooler nights, of a changing slant of the light and the scent of fullness in the woods and out-of-the-way places.
There's a new crackling sound in the leaves as the wind moves between them, a new crispness that wasn't there a month ago, their rustle louder as they begin the slow process of releasing their moisture toward their inevitable fall. But summer will persist until the autumnal equinox in September, the month of indecision, of the push/pull between two seasons, when the world as we know it here in the north clings to one yet is inexorably drawn to the other.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Friday, June 6, 2014
A Bending of the Light
It happens every year at about this time without fail in this part of the world. The heavy oppressive damp days of July and August descend upon us, and for days that sometimes grow into weeks, the air waves are filled more often than not with the sound of air conditioners and fans running. The sound becomes commonplace after awhile, and the silence almost deafening on days when we must turn them on early as the sun aims its hot eye once again upon us.
Without warning, the wind direction shifts from south or east to west and north, and we are refreshed by the cooler air from Canada that banishes the high summer haze from the landscape. Freed from the ephemerous curtain that hangs over everything for most of July and sometimes into August, objects become clearer, more sharply defined, colors brighter and richer, and we can see again. And then one day, again without much fanfare, there it is. The decidedly altered slant of the light, both in early morning and late afternoon, signaling once again the earth's slow but inexorable tilt away from the sun's intensity. It is almost as it if one day, the light and heat are fully upon us in their insistent mid-year way, and then the next, they have turned their attentions away from us to focus on something else besides baking us and coaxing sweat from every pore. Shadows fall sooner than they did, and birds no longer sing into the twilight hours.
It is once again coming upon my favorite time of year-early autumn. Not a huge fan of heat and humidity, I welcome the cooler drier nights of this end-of-summer month. Just knowing the evening and night will be cooler makes the day's heat more tolerable, and that this month is a gateway of sorts to that glorious season of multicolored tapestries and still mild but bug-free days. There is no question that this cool-down invigorates me and makes me want to get back out there roaming and seeing what I've been missing these last few torrid weeks.
Butterflies congregate on flower shrubs, and birds busy themselves seeking out the plump seed heads of many plants and some species of trees. My little chipmunk friend has been running back and forth across the porch these last few days, most likely foraging for and storing away supplies for the coming cold months. I've started putting bread crumbs out for him, and they are disappearing. That tiny creature keeps me grounded and connected internally to the wild places. We share a common love, it and I, for the places untrodden by the rest of the world.
At night, the window fan pulls in much cooler air now, and a very large cricket managed to sneak its way into the kitchen one day last week. It emerged in another room today, so I gently picked it up and redeposited it outside where it hopped away instantly. I hear its kind loudly now each night, one of the most familiar and comforting sounds of late summer. Its distinctive chatter, which it produces by rubbing its wings together, sometimes manages to transcend the other noises around here, coming at me from the grass beneath my bedroom window, and I find myself listening for it now at night when I manage to resist thoughts of those other things that should be consuming me but don't quite make it across the vast fields of my mind.
The end of August approaches, and right behind it, a month of beginnings and endings. Children will be returning to school, yellow buses will be rolling once again, corn fields will be shorn of their late gold, and early apples will spill from baskets at roadside stands. The seasonal shift is like an invisible wave that I have been riding now for several decades, and it is a journey I never tire of. This is the best part of the ride, when the air sweetens from the rich aroma of the season's fullness, the days shorten and the light reaches me from a different direction. For a few days, I'll see the sun rise through those trees across the street, and then one day, it won't be there. It will have slipped behind buildings and I'll miss its first peek above the urban horizon.
Through the still-green trees, this closest of morning stars scatters its brilliance among the branches through leaves more than willing to help split its light, and I find myself wishing quietly upon it as I would upon any other more distant orb as it reveals to me another new day.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Without warning, the wind direction shifts from south or east to west and north, and we are refreshed by the cooler air from Canada that banishes the high summer haze from the landscape. Freed from the ephemerous curtain that hangs over everything for most of July and sometimes into August, objects become clearer, more sharply defined, colors brighter and richer, and we can see again. And then one day, again without much fanfare, there it is. The decidedly altered slant of the light, both in early morning and late afternoon, signaling once again the earth's slow but inexorable tilt away from the sun's intensity. It is almost as it if one day, the light and heat are fully upon us in their insistent mid-year way, and then the next, they have turned their attentions away from us to focus on something else besides baking us and coaxing sweat from every pore. Shadows fall sooner than they did, and birds no longer sing into the twilight hours.
It is once again coming upon my favorite time of year-early autumn. Not a huge fan of heat and humidity, I welcome the cooler drier nights of this end-of-summer month. Just knowing the evening and night will be cooler makes the day's heat more tolerable, and that this month is a gateway of sorts to that glorious season of multicolored tapestries and still mild but bug-free days. There is no question that this cool-down invigorates me and makes me want to get back out there roaming and seeing what I've been missing these last few torrid weeks.
Butterflies congregate on flower shrubs, and birds busy themselves seeking out the plump seed heads of many plants and some species of trees. My little chipmunk friend has been running back and forth across the porch these last few days, most likely foraging for and storing away supplies for the coming cold months. I've started putting bread crumbs out for him, and they are disappearing. That tiny creature keeps me grounded and connected internally to the wild places. We share a common love, it and I, for the places untrodden by the rest of the world.
At night, the window fan pulls in much cooler air now, and a very large cricket managed to sneak its way into the kitchen one day last week. It emerged in another room today, so I gently picked it up and redeposited it outside where it hopped away instantly. I hear its kind loudly now each night, one of the most familiar and comforting sounds of late summer. Its distinctive chatter, which it produces by rubbing its wings together, sometimes manages to transcend the other noises around here, coming at me from the grass beneath my bedroom window, and I find myself listening for it now at night when I manage to resist thoughts of those other things that should be consuming me but don't quite make it across the vast fields of my mind.
The end of August approaches, and right behind it, a month of beginnings and endings. Children will be returning to school, yellow buses will be rolling once again, corn fields will be shorn of their late gold, and early apples will spill from baskets at roadside stands. The seasonal shift is like an invisible wave that I have been riding now for several decades, and it is a journey I never tire of. This is the best part of the ride, when the air sweetens from the rich aroma of the season's fullness, the days shorten and the light reaches me from a different direction. For a few days, I'll see the sun rise through those trees across the street, and then one day, it won't be there. It will have slipped behind buildings and I'll miss its first peek above the urban horizon.
Through the still-green trees, this closest of morning stars scatters its brilliance among the branches through leaves more than willing to help split its light, and I find myself wishing quietly upon it as I would upon any other more distant orb as it reveals to me another new day.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
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