Something foggy, something new

I am tired of the fog and overcast that is the month of August in 2013. Fog has worn out its welcome, as far as I’m concerned. Photographically, fog can be interesting, but I’ve come to suspect that it’s only interesting if you don’t have to look at it every day.  Partly as a result of the fog, today marked the first day of the waning part of the year where I needed my headlamp on my morning walk with Baby Dog.

Around the cabin, the Joe Pye weed is blooming, a sign that summer is waning.  It’s too early to say I can see signs that autumn is approaching, but I can tell that summer is past its peak.

This weekend for the first time I heard three yellow-billed cuckoos calling at the same time. Two were quite close to the cabin. I even saw one as it flew away, though if I hadn’t been able to pinpoint where it was by its call, I never could have ID’d the bird from the momentary flash of wings that I saw. The second bird wasn’t much further away but on the other side of the cabin.  I only heard the third bird because I stopped what I was doing to listen to the calls of the two near me. The third bird was so distant, it may well have been on the neighboring mountain.

I’ve always assumed there was more than a single cuckoo around, but I never heard them calling back and forth like this.  Usually, I hear one and after a pause, I’ll hear another call a bit of a distance away, and then perhaps I’ll hear another call from even further away, but that could easily be explained as a single bird moving through the forest.    I’ve never heard three separate birds calling at the same time before.  
Something new like that really makes my weekend.  Much that happens during a natural year is a repeat of what happened the year before and the years before that.  As much as I enjoy the ordinary progress of a year, catching something new to me is always much appreciated.