5:53 a.m. 53 degrees, wind WSW 0 mph. Sky: a smattering of clouds in the east, imbued with peach, evident everywhere else. Permanent streams: upper, still a ripple; lower, nothing new, a memory of water. Wetlands: a bowl of layered ground fog; thin enough to see the pale blue sky, the silhouetted evergreens, bleached and pointy, and the muted greens and browns of reeds, which march to the far shore like a front yard gone amuck. Pond: mist rolling and rising, thin as breath on an autumn morning.
Signs of change: fallen leaves, the yellow of basswood, large misshapen circles; the red of red maple trim a patch of the road; here and there a big-toothed aspen leaf, a sampler of autumnal colors; and a solitary sugar maple leaf, yolk yellow. Green leaves look a little worn and tired. Noisy red squirrels full of verve; can't clip enough green pinecones, which make waterless splashdowns. Red-eyed vireos . . . as still as stone.
From the barn to the pond, patchy choruses of red-breasted nuthatches, like sonic beads strung on a necklace, collectively far more than I've heard or seen all summer. Nuthatches must be abandoning southern Canada, where seed crops of spruce and fir have collapsed; headed toward the coast . . . the first audible pulse of fall migration. Along the way, they raid my sunflower feeders; only goldfinches more common than red-breasted nuthatches. A male evening grosbeak, first I've seen in more than a month, joins the feeder crowd.
Alternate winters, nuthatches would appear on coastal Long Island, mostly in the stunted pitch pines woods of Jones Beach and Fire Island. They ate pine seeds and tried to avoid merlins and northern shrikes, both of whom left the same Canadian forests, tailgating their lunch wagon south. A migratory chain reaction, which made winter walks on the barrier beach an eye-level glimpse of a boreal foodchain. Red-breasted nuthatches specialize in the tiny seeds of spruce and fir, cone crops that frequently boom or bust; cycles that flip or flop alternate summers (usually). Merlins and shrikes specialize in small songbirds.
Two little brown bats behind the barn door echo the nuthatches. Both speak of change . . . the only constant in the natural world (besides day length). A language not forgotten by those of us in attendance.