The coming of fall...and winter!

Some more much needed rain is falling on Roundtop Mtn. today. The sky is foggy and dark—too dark to take a photo, so the one in today’s post was taken over the weekend. By the time this storm finally clears sometime on Thursday, fall will be firmly in residence, judging by the forecast temperatures and promised blustery winds.

At my cabin before the rain started, I saw two phoebes, which surprised me. I haven’t seen phoebes now for a few weeks, so I suspect these were not my local summer birds, but two that were already in mid-migration. They seemed happy enough, flitting around and singing their “fee-bee” call. It made me wonder if the early part of migration is a bit like what we humans would call a vacation. It’s all fun and games at the start, but often enough we are glad to get back home by the end of it. These birds still seemed to be in the fun and games part of the journey.

This year seemed to be a good year for deer to drop twin fawns. I can’t think of one doe and fawn combination that didn’t have twins. Of the 3-4 pairs I see regularly, only one set is losing their spots at the moment.

With the rain and breeze that accompanied it, many or most of the dried and shriveled leaves that came from weeks without rain have fallen. The result is that the forest looks greener than it has for a while, though the forest canopy is a bit thinner. It’s not a lot thinner yet, but I can see patches of sky now, where I could see only leaves just last week. And with the coming of fall, that means winter isn't too far away and in looking around the outside of the cabin, I realize I have a lot of work to do before then. When the temperature was 95 and the humidity high, it was all too easy to ignore the work for another day.  Now I have no more excuses.