6:32 a.m. 50 degrees, wind N 4 mph. Sky: a moving target; begins blue-gray and bleached out; then condenses into mauve-rimmed sheets, with brightening and dimming highlights. Permanent streams: upper, soulful and shallow puddles; lower, destitute, a stickleback's nightmare. Wetlands: a morning without mist. Pond: water withdrawal; shoreline a reflection of summer levels; sloped layers like incipient sedimentary rock or an open book, the pages spread. A painted turtle breaks the surface, sees me, and sinks. Kingfisher flyover, hunting on its lonesome, lands somewhere along the rim of the marsh, close to the collapsing beaver dam, issues a rattling call. Not much water. Not many fish.
Most red-breasted nuthatches moved on; just three tin horns in the pines. Each autumn, more than four billion birds migrating over or around the Gulf of Mexico, crossing mountains and plains, cities with a million distracting lights, passing northbound tropical storms, some big enough to be named. Arriving in South America, a colossal achievement for a tiny bird.
Black-throated green warbler, clipped verses of spring song, rolls out of forgotten and forsaken woods. No one answers—a bird on its own (for the moment) in a treacherous world. I stand listening to the lost voice.
And now, with the arrival of frost, the coming of October, I salve my own concern and imagine the warbler abandoning the yellowing woods, seamlessly urged into another southbound flock. Social inclinations on a chilly night; Migration 101, its how songbirds survive.
Behind the barn door, bats, party of four.