Daylight!

I have daylight on both ends of my work day now! It won’t last for long, but the change is welcome, nonetheless. I will lose the evening’s light before I lose the morning light. I get home just as I’m watching the sun slip behind the western mountains, so the light that’s left is only what remains after sunset.

In the morning I have some real daylight again, and another pleasant surprise from that is that I get to hear and see birds in the morning again. This morning I saw/heard eastern bluebird, mourning dove, belted kingfisher, American robins, killdeer, chickadees, titmouse, Carolina wren, blue jay and American crow. After weeks of only hearing the occasional great horned owl on my morning walks, 9-10 species of daylight birds feels like an abundance.

The robins are here in flocks, after weeks of not seeing any on the mountain. I’m pretty sure these are robins from further north, who may not migrate any further south than this if the winter isn’t a harsh one. They are likely to remain for some weeks, at any rate.

In a normal year, the local weather records say I should have had my first hard frost by now. I haven’t had one of those yet, but if the forecast is correct, I should have one on Friday and Saturday nights. So far this fall, the daylight temperatures have been lower than average and the nighttime temperatures have been higher than average. This may simply be caused by the over abundance of cloudy weather this fall, as clouds help retain the heat of the day while on a clear night the heat heads for Mars. To me, the fall temperatures have felt fairly normal, though the leaves have clung to the trees longer than is typical.

I took the photo for today on Sunday (before the wind storm). The cows at the far end of the pasture look pretty content, and the woods were pretty.