In Between

With every day that passes, fall progresses a little more, a little deeper into the season. Each morning I find another leaf, another branch that bears some color, though I am still several weeks away from the peak. If you look closely in the photo, you can see a little twinge of color on the tree in the foreground.

This is a time when the summer residents have left, but the winter ones haven’t yet arrived. I no longer hear eastern pewees, even on the weekend mornings when I am home and could hear them if they called. The eastern kingbirds are gone. The barn swallows are gone. I still see monarch butterflies, but they are always heading south.

It is still too early for the skeins of Canada geese or tundra swans to fill the sky. They are only just now leaving their northern grounds. It is still too early for the first juncos to arrive. The white-throated sparrows aren’t here yet, either. Activity at the birdfeeder by the year-round bird residents is picking up, a sure sign it won’t be long before the winter birds are here.

It is another in-between time or is it just that almost every time is an in-between time? The natural world is always moving. Even deepest winter is between fall and spring, though sometimes the deepest weather, no matter if it’s the hot end or the cold end, seems never-ending. Right now, I am somewhere in between the first signs of fall and height of fall. But exactly where I am, in between, is always a moving target.