5 October 2011 - Changing

October. It is a month of change. The leaves turn color and begin dropping. The final roses bloom, before the profusion of rose hips weigh down the canes. Once vibrant billows of Black-eyed Susans stand stiff with bristly seed heads. While the gardener in me wants to run out and chop the blackened heads off, I wait, for these heads are a goldfinch magnet.

The garden has not yet been touched by frost, but several nights in the 40 to 42 degree range have killed the most tender of the annuals. 

The temperature changes in October are as radical as March. Yesterday our high was 46. By Saturday we should be back up to 78. I look forward to that. We have had big wind storms coming out of the east and north resulting in downed limbs, power flickering on and off, as well as long outages.

In my backyard I notice that the little birds are beginning to flock up. This includes nuthatches (both the white and rosy-breasted varieties), titmice, chickadees and even downy woodpeckers. Since we feed birds all year, we have had these birds about the feeder all summer, but now they are showing up in great numbers.

The bigger birds are flocking up too. At work, the power lines are covered with starlings. Hundreds of them—shoulder to shoulder on the lines from pole to pole. All at once they take off together, swirl around then land again. Every year I go through the same ritual. I stand in the parking lot and stare up at them wondering what kind of bird they are before I remember about starlings. They are a confusing bird. First there is the seasonal color change. Not only do they have different winter and summer colorations, but as they molt in the fall the winter feathers come in tipped in white which gives them a speckled appearance. The white tips disappear going into winter leaving the glossy/iridescent black I associate with starlings. In addition to the color changes, the starlings’ bills also change color—from yellow in the summer to black in the winter. 

The juveniles are another story. They start out a dark grayed-brown, but then in October they also start to get the white tipped winter feathers, so you can see lots of brown headed birds with black speckled bodies. What the heck is that?  No wonder I’m confused.   

Another interesting thing about starlings in the fall, is that as they gather up they all talk softly. No great squawking, squabbling cackles like you hear in the spring and summer. Just soft little murmurs. It’s no surprise that one of the group names for this bird is a murmuring of starlings. Very fitting.

And speaking of birds molting and color change, today there was a cardinal outside my window. He was in a rather pathetic state of molt. His head had bald spots and he was missing feathers from his crest. He was staying on the inside of trees. Usually cardinals are on the top of the tree singing their little hearts out. 

October also brings a new source entertainment for both myself and the cats. The squirrels are in full mating dance. This involves long chases around, up and through trees. This goes on for days before a female picks a proper male. This morning I was watching a pair spiral down a huge cottonwood tree across the street. Pandacat was crouched at the bottom watching. When the squirrels were about three feet from the ground,  Pandacat couldn’t stand it any longer and dashed up the tree after them. For a moment all three were frozen in a three way face off. 

On my lunch hour I took a friend up to the Berry Lake Nature Preserve. We wolfed down our sandwiches so we could hit the trails. Elisa is a very copasetic friend. We both quilt (although she actually finishes projects), we both love to take picture. Having a beautiful place to walk? Fabulous. We sat in the car with our sandwiches watching a really fat squirrel eat acorns. Then a doe came wandering by. Good start! I am fond of Berry Lake because it has series of very large ponds, or maybe small lakes.


At any rate, it is home to swans, Canadas, lots of ducks and even more duckweed, and the occasional flotilla of seagulls. Fallen trees often look like alligators lurking in the duckweed. Duckweed is also a favorite of mine. In calm water the current curls it around in swirly patterns. When there is a breeze, it all piles up on one side of the lake.
 
Naturally duck weed calls for the obligatory ducks. Considering how the ducks nibble their way through the duck weed, it is surprising to see the quantity still available.


Many of the trees sport bat houses. If you watch carefully you can spot the occasional woodpecker and even small hawks.
 
The park also has a very picturesque covered bridge that is often used for engagement photo backgrounds, the occasional wedding party and other gatherings.


We saw eight huge wooly bears lumbering across the path during our walk. Fat wooly bears are supposed to signify a hard winter. In all my time here in Michigan, I have never before seen eight in one day. We usually spot them in the yard during fall clean up. But it might only be one or two. 

 Right now, with all the changing colors the park is particularly spectacular. I am most fond of the vine covered trees. The vines turn dark red and really light up the landscape. It is fall's version of wrapping tree trunks with Christmas lights.

Elisa is also an avid techie. She and her family are big into geocaching and waymarking. When we hit the park the first thing she did was pull out her handheld gps and look to see if there was a geocache anywhere in the park. Yes, there was one. And I found it! Elisa says I am no longer a geocaching virgin. 


Were I to get interested in this, I would get myself a geocache name, and log all the sites I’ve been to online. Complete with picture of the site. Good grief. In this case, the cache was a large plastic bottle hidden in a hollow base of a tree.


Inside of the bottle is a notebook to write down your cache name, the date and where you are from. Since this geocache was considered easy, it had toys for kids in it. Kids can take one, if they leave one. Elisa carries special one inch square tiles with her name Scrapcat on one side and a picture, in this case a flamingo, on the other. She left a tile in the cache. Weird. This is really becoming a big thing for families to do together. I'm all for anything that gets today’s kids outdoors.

Here is the cache, hidden, revealed, and with
me holding the cache.