To Everything There Is A Season

Last Tuesday it was 102 degrees outside, and 93 degrees inside, where I was trying to write a newspaper column on hummingbirds. I had a bandana tied around my forehead to keep the sweat from dripping into my eyes and onto the keyboard. A floor fan, set on "high," did little to cool me down, and reminded me just by its presence that our electric bill is going to be horrendous this month. So is our quarterly water bill, thanks to daily watering of the vegetable garden.

But today it is a cool, fresh 60 degrees, and there is a light mist cleaning the air. I stood in the rain for a few minutes just to feel the moisture on my skin. There's a pureness to the air which is much welcomed following two weeks of high temperatures and high pollution levels, partly due to smoke from the interior wildfires which has drifted into the Willamette Valley. Thanks to the breeze and the rain, today there isn't a trace of smoke and my lungs are blissfully drinking in the clean air.

I don't have to look very far or search very hard for visible signs that the season is changing. Apples and pears are beginning to ripen on the ancient orchard trees in my yard. I've been keeping my eyes open for the first varied thrush to arrive, they always come to eat the windfall fruit. The laurel hedge has set berries, and that has attracted flocks of robins and cedar waxwings, some of whom will stay all winter. Like many other birds at this time of year, the western scrub-jays have begun to molt, giving them a ragged appearance until their sleek, new feathers fill in the gaps. Black-headed grosbeaks are coming to the feeders, as they do for a couple of weeks every year at this time. And, sadly, the rufous hummingbirds which entertained us with their hummer wars over the last couple of weeks have gone, continuing south on their migration.

There is a gathering-in atmosphere in the wild community which is our backyard. Yesterday I saw squirrels harvesting leaves from the apple tree. I wonder whether they will use the leaves to store for food, or to line their nests for the winter? The jays, too, have been caching sunflower seeds in hanging plants and garden corners, for emergency rations when the temperatures drop. Like the squirrels, their instinct is to hoard food, even though a couple of generations of squirrels and jays have been coming to my feeders and they have little reason to stash food elsewhere. But instinct is much more powerful than the learned behavior of coming to a feeder. However much I enjoy seeing the birds at my feeders, it is nice to know they are not totally dependent on me for their food, nor should they be. Even the Anna's hummingbirds, which will come to the nectar feeder every few minutes during the winter cold snaps, will supplement their diet with tiny bugs, and sometimes even tree sap.

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