Falling leaves

It’s official.  The peak of fall colors is past and the leaf drop has begun.  Of course, a hard rain last night and strong breeze today will push things along faster than is typical but that’s how it goes.  This is the week when I wade ankle deep through the forest’s leaves that litter my porch and deck.  I sweep the leaves every evening but for at least a week it does no good. Every day there are more.

One year I refused to sweep the leaves for a week, and I was soon knee deep in them on my front porch.  Having tried that once, now I sweep them daily until the leaf drop is over.  What I like to do is to study the leaves a bit and to name the species of trees they come from.  In my forest, white oak, red oak, tulip poplar, hickory and American beech are the most common species. I also find a few others, like chestnut oak, sassafras and wild cherry.  Sometimes I find an American chestnut, but these are likely from a younger tree that has not yet succumbed to the disease that devastated this species.


The leaves are blown from all over, who knows where, really, so if I find an unusual leaf, trying to then locate the tree it came from is pretty much impossible.  That doesn’t stop me from looking. Sooner or later I will be successful with one of them.

Color passing its peak

 

The fall color is now past its peak here on Roundtop.  The colors were gorgeous on Saturday and Sunday morning, when these photos were taken.  This year is a far cry from the drab shades in 2014, which were hurt by both wind and rain at just the wrong time.

Around noon on Sunday, a strong easterly breeze blew up, taking the first round of fall color with it.  Several more rounds of wind or rain will be needed before all the leaves are down, but the leaves that remain this morning are no longer as dense as they were.

I can, in a few places, see bare tree limbs.  On other trees, green leaves have reappeared, as the most colored ones have fallen. It will be another 10 days, perhaps a bit longer depending on the weather, before the trees are winter bare again.  As of last evening I could not yet see the outline of Nell’s Hill to the west of my cabin. I could see, barely, where the sky’s brightness stopped, but that’s hardly the same as seeing the neighboring mountain itself.  With more rain and wind predicted for mid-week, I may well see its outline or the mountain itself before the weekend.

The falling leaves produced an afternoon’s entertainment for the cats, who jumped at the window or the glass door, whenever another batch of them fell. Apparently, they thought the falling leaves were prey or perhaps it was only the motion that kept their attention. Poor Baby Dog was trying to sleep and was startled from it every time a cat pounced against the glass.  Finally, she grumbled and headed upstairs, where presumably she couldn’t hear the sound of paws against glass.

Outdoors, the smell of fall fills the air around the cabin.  It is a crisp smell, not yet with the bite of winter but no longer the sweeter smell of summer. I could smell moisture with it, and the musky scent of old leaves on the earth.  Every now and again came the whiff of my neighbor’s fireplace, with wood furnished by a downed tree from the front of my cabin. The air right now has an exclusively October smell and one that doesn’t last long enough for me.  Autumn is here.

Morning light

Morning sunrises this week at Roundtop are especially stunning, and there are several reasons for this.  Perhaps most obvious are the clouds.  For a really spectacular sunrise or sunset, at least a few clouds along the horizon are needed. The clouds turn the most amazing colors as the sun nears the horizon.  This week the clouds have been most cooperative.

Perhaps less thought of, but just as important, is where the sun is when it breaks the horizon.  At Roundtop the sunrises are nearly always “better” than the sunsets.  Partly this is because, except in midwinter, I have a better view to the east than to the west.   However, the real reason is where the sun breaks the horizon this time of year.

We all know that here in the northern hemisphere the sunrise or sunset falls at different points along the eastern or western horizon.  In winter, the sun rises much further to the south than it does in summer.  What this means at Roundtop is that from roughly October to early February, the sunrise reflects across the main snowmaking pond, which doesn’t happen in summer.  That reflection of the sunrise over the pond contributes greatly to good sunrise photos.

Even without the pond, the angle of the sunrise itself creates a different color to the light in these waning seasons.  It’s not just the leaves that make people talk about a “golden” October.  The light from the sun’s lower sky angle is much more golden now than in the summer months, when it is more lemony than golden.  Artists are very aware of the changing color of light, often to their great annoyance as the colors seem to change even as they work.

For me, all this simply translates into better sunrise photos during this time of year.  And that’s always a good reason to have a camera ready.

Dreams of daylight

This morning as I was walking the dogs, I was feeling a bit disconnected from the forest around me, and wondering why since I was, at that moment, walking in the woods.  For a moment or two I blamed the Shelties who were particularly full of themselves and not inclined to listen this morning.  But then I realized that it wasn’t them.  It was the dark.

I have reached that point of the year where I am only home and in the woods when it is dark. As a result I miss so many of the things I notice and love about the forest.  Stumbling in the dark with a fading headlamp isn’t conducive to noticing what I usually see and hear.

Currently, I hear no forest birds, though occasionally a distant great horned owl calls from way up the mountain.  During daylight the forest birds keep up a running conversation of what’s going on around us—the alarm calls when a hawk soars overhead, the cawing of the crow family with all their variety of vocalizations, a stamp from one of the increasingly tame deer.

I also can’t see much, even with the headlamp isn’t fading.  As just once example: Have you ever noticed while walking through a wood how the dirt or mud changes as you near areas where people live? Have you noticed how the soil changes in different areas of a mountain? How the soil is different from the north side to the south side?  From the top to the bottom?

None of that is possible to notice for me now in the dark.  And this morning the stars were hidden by clouds, and about all I could tell about the kind of clouds that were up there was that they were blocking the stars. I miss the daylight conversations of the birds, the subtle differences in the soils, seeing the different shapes of the rocks that face the north or the south side of the mountain, the changing vegetation.  Night has its charms, but perhaps not as many as daylight and certainly not to the exclusion of daylight, as my schedule dictates today. So I sighed a bit, cautioned the Shelties yet again, and walked on.

Fall colors

Nell's Hill

The colors of fall are growing more intense. Each day the colors are more vibrant, and some days I could swear the colors deepen from morning to night. Of course, the golden glow of sunrise and sunset really brightens the shades.

Over the weekend, the area was treated to the first “hello” from old man winter.  We had a brief but intense period of snow, sleet and/or graupel.  Oddly, up on the mountain where I am, less of that fell than almost everywhere else.  I had a brief moment, lasting perhaps 30 seconds of sleet or graupel.  It was after dark when the precipitation fell and it melted almost immediately but there it was.

Now, the brief moment of colder weather is fading, and warmer weather is returning for a brief moment.  That’s the way of fall in this area.  We jump from fall to winter to fall and maybe half a day of summer and then winter again.  It’s impossible to dress appropriately for a full day unless I am near my closet. What’s fine in the morning is terrible by afternoon, or vice versa.

The first frost has also come and gone.  I didn’t have an obvious frost at the cabin so was surprised to see whitened grasses when I left the cabin.  That didn’t last long either.  At least not this time.

Colors

Fall color is near its peak here on Roundtop Mtn., though some areas are still pretty green.  The low-lying valleys and gullys may even be at the peak of fall color.  With the first frost possible on Sunday night, leaves not yet at peak soon will be.  Some leaves are already falling and beginning to litter the lane up to my cabin, but the big fall of leaves is still about two weeks away.

At the moment I am hoping I can continue to dodge acorns, beech nuts and especially walnuts and hickory nuts that are falling all around me.  I would not want to get hit by a walnut seedpod, that’s for sure. Those things are bigger than golf balls.  I hear all manner of nuts land on the roof, the car (so far no dents), rocks and the lane itself.  Often, I can hear them crash through a layer or so of leaves before they hit the ground, but not always.  So far, I can report no injuries to me or the dogs, but we have all had at least a couple of near misses over the past week.

I have seen the first junco of the new season—exactly one.  It sped away, flashing its white outer tail feathers.  That sighting on Monday is still the only one I’ve seen.  The late sunrise and early sunset may be a factor here.  I have yet to get the fall color photo I want because the sun isn’t high enough to be where I want it to be by the time I leave the cabin.  And I can’t get in the cabin and change shoes after work fast enough to catch the evening light on weekdays now.  I simply will have to wait for the weekend and then hope the leaves are not already disappearing.  I am sure that by next weekend, not much of the color will be left.   Winter IS coming.

Speaking of deer...

Last evening as I returned from a meeting, what do I see but one of the summer fawns I mentioned in yesterday’s post.  This sweet, stupid young deer was by itself, calmly cropping grass along the edge of Roundtop’s main parking lot, right in front of the lodge.  Presumably, its four regular cohorts knew better than this poor soul, which has yet to survive a hunting season of any kind.

Roundtop doesn’t allow hunting around its ski area, though it does elsewhere on the mountain.  This little soul is likely in more danger from cars than hunters at this point, but it’s never good when a wild animal is so unwary around human surroundings.  So many dangers—cars, hunting not far away, being spooked by any one of a thousand things into something solid that could injure it, to name a few.  Last evening, fortunately for this little one, none of that happened. It continued to browse the grass until full dark and I could no longer see it.  Full dark, by the way, was not far away; I had to brighten this photo quite a bit, which is why it doesn’t look so good.

This morning, rain showers descended but before that happened the impending rain clouds produced a very attractive sunrise.  As I was driving to work, the sunrise looked even more interesting in my rearview mirror, but I was already off the mountain and on my way and couldn’t take advantage of it any more.

Not invisible any longer

Someone should tell the local Roundtop deer they are no longer invisible.

They used to be invisible when they were bedded down just next to the paintball picnic pavilion when it was midsummer and the underbrush was lush.  Now, with that thinner or nonexistent, I see their eyeshine and their ears in my headlamp every morning as I walk the dogs.  They don’t bother to get up. If I make a second round of the snow-making pond, they will still be there.  With hunting season on the horizon, not to mention poor weather, they will soon need a better hiding place and one that protects them somewhat from whatever cold weather throws at us this year.  Five of them bed down in the same place every night—a large, old doe; two somewhat smaller doe, and two summer fawns that have now lost their spots for the most part.  Maybe they just aren’t ready to let go of summer yet.

Summer has “let go” in other ways now.  The mountains are starting to show color and should be near their peak next weekend, if the weather stays chilly.  I can see a progression of the color from morning to evening now, and each morning brings more shades of autumn to the forest.

I hear both screech owls and great horned owls pretty regularly and often close to the cabin.  I never hear the two on the same day.  The big owl preys on the smaller one, which gives a wide berth to its competitor. I have yet to see white-throated sparrows or juncos, though both can be expected at any moment. The juncos are readily identified because of their white outer tail feathers.  The sparrows take some looking at and that with binoculars.  I was making a run to the recycling bin on Sunday morning, a 3-minute drive, and saw a small flock of sparrows, too far for someone without binoculars in hand to identify.  They could have been anything, but I’d like to think they were white-throated sparrows.  Even if they weren’t, those little sparrows will be here before long.

Changing

Sunrise at Roundtop.  October 8 2015

It won’t be long, another 7-10 days, and the leaf color at Roundtop will be at or near its peak.  Looking at the trees today, that’s a little hard to believe.  The leaves are changing slowly, with still more green than color.  The morning light is fully that of October’s golden rays, though.

I wouldn’t say the leaf change is late.  Timing seems pretty normal at the moment.  I think it’s more than I’m still in the summer mindset of being used to having greenery around me, and the autumn changes isn’t yet far enough along to jog me into a fall mode. And yet I know the prime color season and the first frost can’t be far away.

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t yet seen a junco or a white-throated sparrow to officially mark a new turning in the year’s spinning.  A friend, further east of here, has already had the little sparrow at his feeders, so I know it won’t be long before the new tribe of sparrows arrives.  Now that summer’s ubiquitous chipping sparrows have left, the mountain is rather free of little birds.  For the moment, the mountain is dominated with medium-sized birds, like bluebirds and blue jays and the larger Canadian robins that arrive after the local ones have headed further south. With the leaf canopy thing, various woodpeckers seem more prevalent, but likely it’s just that I can see them better again.

So I’m waiting to be kicked into fall. I just don’t quite feel it yet. Maybe next week.

rainy, chilly but could be worse

The week-long rain and overcast is finally over. The sun peeks through clouds occasionally this morning and shows every sign of soon winning the day.  I am fortunate that hurricane Joaquin didn’t arrive here and add to the already soggy ground.  For a while it looked as though that might happen, and that could well have been catastrophic.  Instead, Roundtop is just starting to dry out, and the weather feels like fall.

The temperature reached as low as 55 in the cabin this past weekend, while I resolutely refused to turn on the heat so early in the season.  I try to go until November 1 without heat, though I have given in, occasionally, on the last week of October.  I’ve never given in on the 3rd or 4th of October, however, and I wasn’t about to start this year. And now that the outside weather is returning to normal October ranges, I don’t have to think about it.  This weekend, the weather was cold enough that all the cats and half the dogs cuddled on the bed with me.  If you’d seen that bed you might have thought it was January.  In a blizzard.

By Sunday the rain mostly stopped, and though the sky was still overcast, the clouds were higher than earlier in the week, a promising sign.  I took advantage of the improving weather to go to the Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville PA, an annual two-weekend event of outrageously decadent food and hundreds of craft vendors and activities. I did manage to avoid the worst of the fried foods, where items that never occurred to me to fry, are.  Naturally, every stand has something apple-based—apple sausage, apple pancakes, apple fritters, turnovers, bread, coffee cake, apple crisp, caramel apples, fried apples and dozens more. I settled for the hot spiced cider, which tasted even better than usual on a raw day.  Even the non-apple staples like pulled pork or pit beef tastes better prepared outside over a wood smoke fire.

To me the festival marks the start of the Christmas shopping season, though I often come home with things for my house and not for someone else’s. My intentions are good, though.  This year I really coveted a finished tree-branch coat stand, and if it hadn’t been so heavy and needed to be carried out of the festival grounds, wrestled onto a shuttle bus and then walked to my car, I would have come home with it. Some things just aren’t meant to be.

I went early in the morning, hoping to beat the crowd, which worked for a couple of hours, though by early afternoon the crowds were near the normal crush.  I suspect that for most of the attendees, myself included, the day marked the first time we’d had our coats out since the spring.

Fog is here to stay for a while

Heavy rain and fog makes the ever-shortening days feel even shorter.  This morning the chickens weren’t even out of the coop when I went to feed them and let them out.  They made a few noises when I talked to them, but that still didn’t encourage them to come out.

I have not yet been plagued by marauding fall raccoons, but a local opossum has discovered the chicken feeder and waddles around occasionally.  I tend to see opossums and raccoons most in spring and late fall.  Sightings are rarer in midsummer around my cabin.

Opossums don’t hibernate and winter is, understandably, difficult for them to survive. That’s why I see them more often then and often in daylight, too.  They come out when the day warms up to look for food. Around my cabin the chickens scatter their feed all over the place or sometimes leave untouched the produce scraps I give them.  Both raccoons and opossums will take advantage of that.  It’s far too early in the season for either species to find food gathering difficult.  Likely the opossum I had was just wandering through the area, perhaps hoping to keep the location of my cabin in its memory banks until winter makes for slim foraging.

I am starting to see some color change in the trees around the cabin. The overall effect is still all green, but individual trees and branches show color.  Once this rain and Hurricane Joaquin clear the area and clear out the fog, I’ll try and get a few photos. For now, it looks as though rain and fog will be covering the forest at least though Monday.  In other words, the fog photos aren't going to go away too soon!

Around Roundtop, signs of fall are emerging almost every day.  Mostly I see the change in the smaller plants—the trees have yet to show much color.  Grasses and annual plants are turning shades of purple or red.  Dry weather has caused some leaves to fall, littering the ground with brown leaves but not the colors of fall. The western mountain shows some hints of color change in individual trees or branches, but I have to look close to see even that.

The forest around my cabin is thinning out, though.  I can see deeper into the woods, and I am ever hopeful for when I can first spot the outline of the mountain to my west.

In the early evening or sometimes in the early mornings I hear the calling of the great horned owls.  I hear both the higher pitched call of the larger female and the lower call of the smaller male.  Sometimes I think I hear a third owl but I can’t be sure of that.  It is still probably a bit early for their courtship, which begins in October, though that month is now but a few days away. Perhaps they are thinking about nesting, though.

Great horned owls are monogamous and famous for fiercely defending their territories.  All the years I’ve lived at Roundtop I’ve heard them calling. It’s only been rare times I’ve seen them, even when the calling is close to the cabin and I try to spot them with my headlamp.  After all this time, it’s possible but not very likely it’s the same pair.  They live an average of 13 years in the wild but the record in the wild is 28 years. I haven’t lived here that long yet, but I’m getting close!  Likely at least one of the birds I hear is a descendant of the owl pair I heard when I first moved here.

Fun with snapping turtle

Snapping turtle in the middle of the road

Hawkwatching wasn’t the only thing I did on my vacation last week.  I “rescued” a huge snapping turtle, the largest one I’ve seen in years. Of course, the turtle did not appreciate my attempts to save it from its own folly, but I don’t expect thanks from snapping turtles.

Here’s how it happened. I was driving home a few miles from the cabin not long before dark.  I was on one of those lightly traveled rural roads typical of my area—a few houses, a few fields and medium-sized patches of forest.  I come around a curve and see a large blob in the middle of the road and soon see it’s a huge snapping turtle, stopped halfway across the road, straddling the double yellow line.

In another few minutes it would be dark and even an aware driver could mistake it for something else, let alone the distracted driver, chatting on a cell phone or thinking about dinner.  So I stopped my car, turned on the flashers and went to investigate. Yep, it’s a big one with a mouth that opened to be the something you could drop an espresso cup into. My appearance didn’t encourage it to move.  At all.

A car approaches and I wave at it to slow down, point at the turtle and get it to go around.  A second car does the same thing, this one containing a young woman who asks what it is.  And then a third car where the occupant agrees that it’s a large turtle. The turtle still hasn’t moved in any meaningful way.

Almost across!

 I return to my car, extract my 5’ long hiking staff and approach cautiously.  I push gently at the turtle with the end of the staff. Naturally it snaps, opening that mouth that’s a good couple inches across. However, the snapping action does move it several inches off the double yellow line.  So I repeat my push, get the same unhappy snapping response, and the turtle is moved another few inches toward the side of the road.  I repeat until the turtle is off the side of the road and in the grass on its shoulder. I tried to get it further off the road and off the shoulder but it was having none of it.   At this point it refused to snap or move any more, and I decided that would have to be good enough.

Apparently it was, as when I returned to the road the next morning, I did not find a flattened turtle. I can only hope it learned its lesson and decides not to cross the road again.

What I did on my summer vacation

View to the north from Waggoner's Gap--a bit of haze in the distance

Ah, vacation!  Too short and never long enough!

My vacation last week was spent outdoors a lot.  I went hawkwatching at Waggoner’s Gap hawkwatch and saw oodles of raptors.  This time of year I can expect to see upwards of 1000 Broad-winged hawks in a day, but I also had good views of many Bald Eagles, a Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon and assorted Sharp-shinned Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks and American Kestrel.
 

A few Broad-winged hawks in a 'kettle"

One of the fun things about a hawkwatch is that raptors often do interesting things as they are migrating.  We saw two Bald Eagles lock talons and fall some feet cartwheeling before breaking off and continuing southwards.  We also watched a young Peregrine Falcon harassing local turkey vultures several times for no obvious reason.  Also unusual was the eastern skink that appeared, missing most of its tail, which in and of itself is not unusual as they can drop their tails in the face of danger.

 

Feet with skink

Dropping a tail can be dangerous for a skink or any of the lizards that can do so.  The tail is a place of fat storage and losing that fatty tail is not a good thing to happen close to winter.  The tail can take up to a year to regrow, so this one will be mostly tailess through the winter, when the loss of fat storage can be fatal.  A skink can only lose its tail once, I’ve read, so it’s at a disadvantage for future encounters with predators, one likely cause of losing the tail in the first place. And apparently, prospective mates don’t much care for tailless mates, so reproductive success is not good when the skink is tailess.

The skink did provide some amusement during times when the birds weren’t flying.  It makes me hope this one beats the odds and makes it through the winter.

September morning

September finally looks like September this morning—no more August humidity or July heat.  I just hope September stays for the rest of the month now and those other two months will disappear until next year.

With summer’s hottest months hanging on for so long, I have nothing to report yet about conditions pointing towards fall. I can say that after 3” of rain, which was much needed if not all at once nor in the monsoon-like torrent that fell, the mountain is crisp and clear again. Overnight the temperature dropped into the 50’s for the first time since June.

Hawkwatching season has begun and that’s what I will be doing for much of next week.  Today, on this beautiful, clear day between two rainy days, hawkwatchers who are already sitting on a mountaintop somewhere should be treated to a good migration day, likely a decent Bald Eagle day, too.  I’m not complaining at all about their good fortune, as I expect to have some excellent days myself during the next week when Broad-winged Hawk migration will peak in my area.

I’ve already heard from the Cape May area this morning that overnight a goodly stream of songbirds is already moving, particularly thrushes of several species. The birds know summer is over. I just hope the weather gets that message now.

Note to summer: Go away!

Sunrise September 6, 2015, Gifford Pinchot State Park 

Someone, please tell summer, “it’s over!”

If the heat doesn’t break soon, this September is already heading towards being the hottest ever in my area.  Currently, the monthly average temperature is 13 degrees above average.  So even when the heat breaks and presumably normal temperatures arrive, that won’t come close to getting the average temperature back to something approaching average.  It would take a good 10 days of some seriously cool weather for that to happen, and such weather is not anywhere on the forecast horizon.  And so we swelter.

Naturally, this much heat with limited rainfall has dried out the forest around my cabin.  I was even skittish about setting up my little picnic grill in the middle of the driveway on Sunday, but I did it anyway, keeping a bucket of water on hand just in case.  Fortunately, nothing untoward happened and the wind was calm.  Even so, I am done with grilling until rain comes along and dampens the dust.

As you might expect, signs of the approaching autumn are in short supply with summer refusing to go away.  Bird migration is still early and progressing but slowly.  The barn swallows leave the end of August no matter what the weather, and now I believe the yellow-billed cuckoo has departed, too.  I would hear those birds perhaps 2-3 times a week over the course of the summer, and it has now been 10 days since I heard them call.  They are the only new species that appears to have left the mountain.  I haven’t heard the wood thrush recently either, but their song is much less evident in the second half of the summer. They might still be around.

The mountain is dry and dusty and smells of dust.  It’s a far cry from the lush smells of spring or even a midsummer morning after a rain.  I await rain to reawaken the good mountain smells, but that won’t come for days and even then the chance is not a good one.

Misty sunrise at Pinchot Lake

September 1 blues

September sunrise with setting moon

Summer is giving me at least one more blast of hazy, hot and humid weather over the next three days.  But in other ways the oncoming season of autumn is ever more evident.  The barn swallows have left the mountain, no longer plying the mosquitos above this little pond.  They left on or about August 27 or 28, as regular as ever. The swallows are the first to go, though I haven’t heard the yellow-billed cuckoo for a while.

I now frequently see red-leafed poison ivy, tall stands of purple thistle and less undergrowth as the annual plants begin to die back.  Mullein is brown and looks burned.  The constellation Orion is high in the morning sky before dawn once again. Even my chickens are producing fewer eggs than in the early days of spring.

Now, if only the temperature would follow suit.  It will, I know, and likely by Friday, but I’m impatient.  After all, it is September.

Going by so quickly

Some days I wish these lazy, hazy days of summer weren’t so crazy.  Too many paths go unwalked, too many stars aren’t stared at and too many birds aren’t looked for.

The season moves, and I’ve already missed so much of it. Even though summer isn’t my favorite of the seasons, some things can only be enjoyed and seen in summer, and so much of it is already gone.  The local soft ice cream stand closes on Labor Day, and I’ve only partaken once.  I managed to get my swimsuit out of winter storage but never got to go swimming.  I have yet to have a cookout or make s’mores. The seat cushions on my outside chairs need replacing, and the stores have already put them away until next summer.

You just know..

You know the summer is turning towards fall when...

...the goldenrod turns golden.  Last evening was the first I found some that had turned color.  I’ve been keeping an eye on it, waiting for the green seeds to turn golden. The arrival of the goldenrod and also of the purple-flowered thistles are a sure sign that late summer is here.  

The change that has the most impact on me, and possibly on my readers, too, is the every-shortening hours of daylight.  It’s dark when I walk the dogs in the morning, and I now have to rush to clean up after the evening meal if I want to walk around the mountain before it gets dark again.  And this is only the beginning of those shorter hours of daylight. I suppose that’s a small price to pay for the next season’s cooler temperatures.  Still, on some ideal earth with a different tilt, I’d order up cooler temperatures AND longer hours of daylight.

Turkeys on parade

Summer has reached the later part of its season here on Roundtop.  The woodland birds have fledged and are out on their own—often with clownish feather-do’s in some weird combination of baby feathers and adult plumage.  Saturday night saw a decent early-season migration.  On Sunday morning I saw a flock of robins, about half of them this year’s young birds.  I also found a few warblers, which is never more than I see here.  Roundtop isn’t a warbler hotspot, by any means.

On Friday evening I found, again, the family of wild turkey I occasionally see.  They were stalking the edge of a cornfield, the young poults already grown since the last time I saw them, which wasn’t very long ago.  There were more of them than I could fit in the frame--another hen and several more poults.
I
 can see a change in the undergrowth of the forest—there’s less of it.  The first of spring annual plants often die back after they flower.  For me, this amounts to being able to see deeper into the forest again, instead of finding a thick curtain of greenery obscuring anything more than 10 feet away.

This summer is shaping up to be less hot than average—it’s still too warm for me.  I’m ready for fall with the first day of 90 degree day.  This year, that came later than it often does and didn’t last as long as usual, too.  At least this summer wasn’t a constant stream of hazy, hot and humid days, but instead was a constant stream of warmer than average days, with no seesawing back and forth between hot and cooler.  It was just constantly in the mid to upper 80s, and the night time temperature didn’t drop as it often does.  As a result the overall effect was a summer about 2.5 degrees hotter than the average of the previous years.  Right now it looks like the 10th hottest August of recorded temperatures in this area.  As I said earlier, I am ready for fall, but I know I’m going to have to wait a while longer.